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Bankruptcy court approves deal over 50 Cent’s debts

By | Published on Thursday 7 July 2016

50 Cent

50 Cent is heading out of bankruptcy after a court in Connecticut approved a plan that will see the rapper’s creditors paid somewhere between 74% and 92% of what they are owed.

As previously reported, 50 Cent applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just under a year ago in the midst of a privacy lawsuit being pursued against him by Lastonia Leviston. The rapper had posted a sex tape featuring Leviston online without her permission. The stunt was seemingly part of a beef Fiddy was having with rival rapper Rick Ross, who has a child with the woman whose privacy was violated.

The courts ordered Fiddy to pay Leviston $5 million in damages, but also requested to see an overview of the rapper’s financial affairs to see if additional punitive damages should be applied as well. That’s when he applied for bankruptcy protection, a move which could have put the ongoing privacy lawsuit on hold indefinitely, except Leviston’s lawyers successfully argued that that shouldn’t happen, and the rapper was subsequently ordered to pay an additional $2 million in punitive damages.

Under the deal approved by the bankruptcy courts yesterday, Fiddy will actually pay Leviston a total of $6 million for the privacy violation. Other creditors will see anything up to 92% of the $21 million he owes them. The rapper has pledged to hand over $7.4 million to creditors right away, then setting aside $2 million a year for each of the next five years. The remaining debts should be settled by the sale of his Connecticut property.

As previously reported, at one point 50 Cent was asked to explain photos of himself surrounded by cash, which he uploaded to Instagram in the middle of the bankruptcy proceedings. He insisted the money in the photos was fake. We don’t yet know whether the helicopter he posed next to after yesterday’s court hearing was just a very realistic cardboard cut out.



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