NEW YORK, Jan. 26 -- The founders of Murder Inc., the hugely successful hip-hop label that was rechristened The Inc. last year, were accused by federal authorities Wednesday of laundering money for a drug-dealing operation that has left three corpses in its wake.
Irv Gotti, whose real name is Irving Lorenzo, and his brother Christopher Lorenzo surrendered to the FBI as prosecutors charged the two with conspiring with a notorious heroin dealer named Kenneth McGriff. As part of the indictment unsealed yesterday, McGriff was charged with killing three men, two of whom were slain in Baltimore.
The Inc.'s Irv Gotti, left, denies charges of laundering drug money.
(John Marshall Mantel -- AP)
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Gotti and his brother were released on $1 million bonds this afternoon after pleading not guilty in federal court in Brooklyn.
"I grew up poor from the streets, so I have friends, whatever, like that. So I don't look bad at them for thinking ill things about me," Gotti said as he left court. "No way, in any way, shape or form have I done anything wrong, except make great music that the people seem to love, and that's all that I'm guilty of."
Until a couple of years ago, Murder Inc. was one of the hottest boutique labels in urban music, with multi-platinum albums by Ja Rule and R&B singer Ashanti, whose self-titled debut sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Gotti was also producing hits for stars like Jennifer Lopez and Fat Joe.
But the offices of The Inc. were allegedly filled with more than just gold records. According to the authorities, more than $1 million -- stuffed in duffel bags, shopping bags and whatever was handy -- was dropped off at the label's offices in midtown Manhattan. Some of it, they said, was carried there by McGriff himself.
It was a 50-50 partnership, said prosecutors. McGriff, they said, had a place to stash the proceeds from his sales, and Gotti and Lorenzo had ready access to hundreds of thousands of dollars of his cash, not to mention the armed-and-dangerous aura that made McGriff and his colleagues so feared. In the rap industry, a little menace never hurts.
"They don't call it gangsta rap for nothing," said Frederick Snellings, special agent-in-charge of the FBI's New York criminal division, the Associated Press reported.
Gotti's lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, did not return a call seeking comment. He has maintained that his client is guilty only of friendship with McGriff, whom Gotti knew as a kid growing up in Queens.
"Irv has as much contact with criminal activities as you or I do," Lefcourt told MTV recently. He predicted that prosecutors would never prove his client guilty of anything.
McGriff founded the Supreme Team, once one of the city's most violent drug crews. Investigators suspect that he revived the drug operation after he finished serving about nine years for drug conspiracy in 1997.
Touting itself for years as "the world's most dangerous label," Murder Inc. was given a less threatening new name after Gotti and Lorenzo concluded last year that their reputation had become a liability. Ties between the brothers and McGriff had long been the stuff of rumors, and heat on the label turned into a full boil after a series of run-ins with the law: Gotti was arrested on charges of possession of the drug ecstasy backstage at an R. Kelly show; Lorenzo suffered a gunshot wound in the lobby of Def Jam Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group that is part-owner of The Inc. Police later concluded that Lorenzo had accidentally shot himself.
A federal investigation into dealings at The Inc. was launched two years ago. Authorities have already charged a handful of alleged accomplices, including Ja Rule's manager. As part of Wednesday's announcement, McGriff was charged with crimes including murder and racketeering. Prosecutors say that McGriff was behind the August 2001 murder of two men who would have been witnesses for the government. He's also accused of killing a rapper known as E-Money Bags.
McGriff won't be hard to find. He's in prison, serving time on a gun possession charge.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
