Grammy-nominated rapper Ryan Leslie has been ordered to pay a $1.2 million laptop reward, even though he has refused. A judge is ordering the hip hop star to pay up for the return of his property including lost music, including accrued interest from the time the item was found until the court ruling was made.
It was reported by The Christian Post on Jan. 2 that Leslie's laptop was stolen along with his backpack from a car he was taken around Cologne, Germany. Leslie was there for concert performances back in 2010. He offered an initial reward of $20,000 for the return of the stolen property, and then after no leads came about, he increased the reward to a whopping $1 million for any of the files or intellectual property on the laptop and hard-drive.
Leslie's attorney, David DeStefano had stated about the second offer made:
"He made a second reward video and offered $1 million for just the intellectual property on the external hard drive and computer, the session files.
They're different from just an MP3, MP3s are nothing for a producer or a studio engineer, they can't do anything with them. They need the session files. These were his compositions"
About a month after the $1 million reward was offered, a German man named Armin Augstein brought the laptop and backpack to police, saying he'd found it a forest. He also said that he had brought the items back to his place in order to look at them further, and discovered Leslie's passport in the backpack, so he knew there was a reward for the item.
With the property recovered there was a problem though, as Leslie claimed the music files were corrupted. Therefore, he refused to pay the reward he had initially offered, which led to Augstein filing a lawsuit. A judge from a federal court in Manhattan subsequently ruled that Leslie must pay Augstein the $1 million as promised, as well as $180,000, which amounts to interest that piled onto the reward from the time the laptop was discovered, until the ruling was made.
Ryan Leslie and his legal representation will reportedly be appealing this verdict. Leslie, an R&B and hip hop star, released his third studio album called "Les is More" back in October of 2012. He's also worked with numerous rappers on a variety of songs including Kanye West, Fabolous, LL Cool J, Cory Gunz nd Talib Kweli.
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