R. Kelly is suing a popular YouTuber as well as the former Bureau of Prisons employee who allegedly sent her information from Kelly’s private conversations inside Chicago’s federal jail.
In all, more than 60 federal employees illegally accessed R. Kelly’s emails and phone calls, and some of them leaked or sold the information to the outside world — including YouTuber “Tasha K” and a Washington Post reporter, according to the suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
The information’s release created “chaos and discord” in Kelly’s life, ruined “certain important relationships,” and led to a judgment taking thousands of dollars out of his prison account, the suit states.
The Tribune first revealed in 2021 that federal authorities were investigating a Bureau of Prisons employee in Wisconsin who was suspected of illegally accessing Kelly’s recorded phone calls, emails, visitor logs and other restricted information during his stay at Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on West Van Buren Street.
The information later surfaced on dramatic YouTube videos from Latasha Kebe, also known as Tasha K, and, Kelly’s lawsuit alleges, was used to influence witnesses in the prosecution against Kelly.
The BOP employee, now retired, has not been criminally charged. Her identity has not been revealed to Kelly’s attorneys, according to the lawsuit.
Kelly, a Chicago native and onetime R&B superstar, had a stunning fall from grace after allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct reached a tipping point in 2019. He has since been convicted of sex-related crimes in two separate federal courts: a Brooklyn jury found him guilty of racketeering in 2021, and the next year he was convicted in Chicago of child pornography and enticement of minors.
He is currently serving his overlapping prison sentences in a medium-security facility in North Carolina. He is not scheduled for release until 2045, records show.
Monday’s suit accuses an unidentified prison employee of selling Kelly’s information to Kebe, whose YouTube channel “Unwinewithtashak” has more than 1 million subscribers. Some of Kebe’s content promised “exclusive” information about drama in Kelly’s personal life while he was awaiting trial; during one video, she read aloud what seemed to be a summary of a recorded call between Kelly and his girlfriend, Joycelyn Savage, whom Kebe said was “crying hysterically.”
“Yeah, there’s a phone tap somewhere and I’m not gonna tell you where it’s at,” Tasha K. told her viewers during one November 2019 video. “I have the plug. I’m not gonna tell you where I got the information from, but just listen to the damn information, OK?”
The lawsuit claims that one of Kelly’s ex-girlfriends, who later became a star prosecution witness at the Brooklyn trial, may have turned against Kelly in part because she found out about “certain statements concerning his personal life” that had only been shared with one of Kelly’s lawyers.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe, “refused to divulge how she received the information but claimed that she was privy to (Kelly’s) conversations with his attorney,” the suit states, adding that Kelly was “shocked and confused” and “had no idea how certain private information was making its way into the public domain.”
Kebe later admitted that she not only spoke publicly about some of Kelly’s information but also privately gave it to Jane Doe and her family members “members for the purpose of interfering with (Kelly’s) criminal prosecutions,” according to the suit.
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Kebe is no stranger to celebrity lawsuits; the rapper Cardi B recently won a defamation suit against her. Kebe has since filed for bankruptcy, records show.
Prison employees continued to access Kelly’s information after authorities began to investigate the potential leaks to Kebe, according to the suit.
In August 2022, The Washington Post reported that Kelly had some $28,000 in his prison account at the same time he owed $140,000 in court-ordered fines. That information came from a BOP employee who shared it with the Post reporter, according to the lawsuit; not long after the story published, a federal judge in New York ordered the Bureau of Prisons to turn over that money to the court.
Kelly’s lawsuit, which also names the federal government as a defendant, alleges that the Department of Justice “had no authority to confiscate those funds which would have not occurred in any event if the information was not leaked to the public,” and states that the money on Kelly’s books came from “generous gifts from his loyal fan base.”
Kelly’s appeals of his federal convictions are pending.
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
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