Hip-hop’s Mally Mall sentenced to nearly three years for running prostitution ring

Rapper-producer-reality show figure Mally Mall has been sentenced to nearly three years in federal prison for running an interstate prostitution ring.

According to documents from the federal court in downtown Las Vegas, Jamal “Mally Mall” Rashid, 45, owned and operated a number of escort businesses that were fronts for prostitution from 2002 to 2014. According to the FBI — which had been investigating him since 2014, when they raided his Las Vegas home, serving warrants for both human and exotic animal trafficking — he “persuaded, induced, enticed and caused” hundreds of victims to prostitute themselves for his benefit.

“Rashid operated a high-end prostitution business that transported victims across the United States, using various paid websites — such as Backpage and Eros — to advertise the victims for prostitution purposes,” said a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office, District of Nevada.

In court documents, victims told of “threats of surveillance and violence, verbal abuse, and actual violence.”

Those court records also said, “Rashid encouraged the women to get tattoos of him to demonstrate their loyalty ... he put trackers on their cars and cameras in their condos, and they needed permission to go to the gynecologist.”

In the Thursday sentencing hearing of Rashid, whose website bills him as “The Egyptian God of Music,” Judge Gloria Navarro said the victims “couldn’t speak to anyone who is Black because a Black person could be a pimp. This was almost a form of imprisonment or enslavement.”

California native Rashid’s hip-hop production credits began in 1999; he eventually worked with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony on “Thug Stories” (2006) and “Strength and Loyalty” (2007). He released his own album, “Mallys World, Vol. 1,” in 2017. He has worked with artists such as Usher, Drake, Tyga and David Guetta and is known for his friendships with the likes of Scott Disick and Justin Bieber.

After Bieber admired Rashid’s capuchin monkeys when staying at the producer’s home, Rashid gave the singer one for his birthday. Bieber named it after him (“OG Mally”). However, when Bieber tried to take the monkey with him to Munich, German authorities confiscated it (“Honestly, everyone told me not to bring the monkey. Everybody,” Bieber told GQ. “I was like, ‘It’s gonna be fine, guys!’”). Bieber was given a couple of months to produce required paperwork to retrieve the monkey but did not; he was fined $8,000 to move OG Mally to a zoo.

As to the other Mally, he raised his public profile with a string of appearances with then-girlfriend Nikki Mudarris on VH1’s reality show “Love and Hip Hop: Hollywood.” During his “Love and Hip Hop” run, he attempted to seduce one of Mudarris’ costars, setting off a firestorm between the women. He was also allegedly the source of a leaked sex tape of himself and Mudarris in 2015. This leak was after the FBI raid in 2014. Mudarris was reportedly granted a restraining order against Rashid; she claimed he had not only threatened to humiliate her before releasing the tape, but injured her nose and destroyed several of her phones.

Rashid had pleaded guilty in October 2019 to one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of unlawful activity in the prostitution case; by the terms of that agreement, his sentence would be between one and 33 months.

Rashid reportedly told the court, “I truly apologize to the court, the government and, most importantly, the women involved.”

Though his attorney, David Chesnoff, had asked the court for leniency, citing his client’s statement of remorse and his work with teenagers in crisis, Navarro imposed the maximum prison sentence under the agreement, followed by three years of supervision.

She also ordered Rashid to stop working with vulnerable teenagers.

Chesnoff told a reporter from 8 News NOW Las Vegas, “Mr. Rashid expressed his remorsefulness [in court] and accepted responsibility, and he is ready to do what the judge said and go back and make people happy with his music.”