The night before his Manhattan court date in a $5 million sex-tape suit, 50 Cent was partying at a Los Angeles club to promote his vodka brand.
“I can’t remember a year that I had this much fun,” he wrote Sunday on a social media photo at the Effen Vodka bash. “Just good energy every were [sic] I go.”
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The rapper-mogul, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, was slated to disclose five years’ worth of finances on Monday after a jury awarded Lastonia Leviston millions in damages over a sex tape Fiddy posted of her online.
Jackson bought the footage from Leviston’s ex and posted it online to taunt hip-hop rival Rick Ross, court papers reveal. Leviston is the mother of Ross’s child, and the video nearly drove her to suicide, her lawyers charge.
Originally posted on 50 Cent’s website, the video spread to porn sites and has garnered millions of views. The rapper, wearing a wig and playing his “Pimpin’ Curly” character, crudely narrates over the tape and mocks the woman’s body.
The Florida mom reportedly broke down in tears when the jury read the verdict Friday. She was awarded $2.5 million for Jackson’s use of her image without permission and $2.5 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
But the “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” moneymaker is crying poverty—and it’s not the first time he’s done so. Just before court Monday morning, he filed for bankruptcy in an apparent bid to dodge the payout. The maneuver postpones the trial and prevents Jackson from revealing his net worth and tax returns.
Jackson claims to owe creditors $10 million to $50 million, according to a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Connecticut, where he owns a 50,000-square-foot mansion that he’s attempted to sell for years. The last asking price was $10 million.
His boxing promotion company, SMS Promotions, also filed for bankruptcy in May, apparently to further delay Leviston’s suit, which was filed in 2010.
As 50 Cent’s attorneys held up the case, the entertainer was preparing another Effen Vodka party in West Hollywood. He apparently signed bottles Sunday at a Glendale, California, liquor store before heading to Los Angeles.
The bankruptcy filing allows the rapper “to continue his involvement with various business interests and continue his work as an entertainer, while he pursues an orderly reorganization of his financial affairs,” Jackson’s attorney, William A. Brewer, said in a statement.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Paul Wooten did not seem amused by the second bankruptcy filing Monday morning, telling Jackson’s legal team, “This is the second such bankruptcy your client has filed in the last 30 days.”
Wooten said he wasn’t “impugn[ing] the sincerity of the defendant’s application for bankruptcy” but that he wanted to “communicate … the court’s frustration with continuously trying to get this case resolved.”
The judge, who on Friday denied a request to quash a financial subpoena, described the six-week trial as “contentious” and “tortuous.”
Leviston’s attorneys plan to file an emergency petition in the Hartford, Connecticut, bankruptcy court to permit the trial to continue. Under law, the filing of a bankruptcy petition “automatically stays” other civil proceedings against a debtor.
“We will be back,” one of Leviston’s lawyers, Philip Freidin, told The Daily Beast. “We are not giving up. We will not be defeated by these delays.”
The debt claim comes days after The New York Times extolled the rapper as a “renaissance man” for his movie roles and slew of business enterprises, which include a headphones company, men’s luxury underwear, and video game series.
Jackson is the face of Effen Vodka and has an ownership stake in the company. The rapper has been on a liquor-store circuit to shill the brand—posing for pictures and signing bottles in the country’s remotest crevices.
Last month, the tour brought Jackson to Billy’s Liquors in Abington, Massachusetts, a town of about 15,000 people. The store hired a security firm for the event, which ended up selling 1,260 Effen bottles, The Enterprise newspaper reported.
In April, 50 Cent sold 1,400 bottles at a Syracuse liquor store, where hundreds of people lined up for the noontime signing.
Jackson is due in Wisconsin this month and will visit Woodman’s supermarkets in suburban Oak Creek and Sun Prairie—news that baffled many locals on social media. The Milwaukee Record declared what everyone was thinking: “50 Cent is coming to the Woodman’s in Oak Creek for some reason.”