Pretty Ricky’s Baby Blue was sentenced to 20 months in jail.
For the uninitiated, Pretty Ricky was a late 90s R&B and hip-hop group from Florida that had their peak in the early 2000s with a string of hits that earned them a huge following, especially among females.
The group has not enjoyed any recent hits and may be the reason behind one member’s run-in with the law. ‘Baby Blue,’ whose given name is Diamond Blue Smith, was sentenced to almost two years in prison for scamming the government. According to the Justice Department, Baby Blue was one of several people arrested in October 2020 in what became a huge COVID-19 relief loan scam. According to a Department of Justice press release, Baby Blue and others were charged for “alleged participation in a scheme to file fraudulent loan applications seeking more than $24 million in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.”
Baby Blue pleaded guilty earlier this year and subsequently had most of his assets, including his Ferrari, seized. During a Hollywood Unlocked interview before his June court-ordered appearance, the “Grind With Me” singer was hopeful for a redemptive future after his release.
Trauma continues to find its way to the entertainer’s doorstep. Last year, he was shot in the shoulder and hospitalized following an attempted robbery. Due to the nature of his other injuries, he had to learn to walk again. He will now have to adjust to life behind bars for twenty months. The sentence…
