'Jacob the Jeweler' pleaded guilty Wednesday to falsifying records and giving false statements to investigators looking into a multistate drug ring.
The jeweler, whose real name is Jacob Arabov, has made jewelry for everyone from Jay-Z and Kanye West to Elton John.
Terms of the plea deal call for Jacob Arabov to serve up to 46 months in prison and pay a $2 million penalty. No sentencing date was immediately set by U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn.
In return for the guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop money laundering charges against him.
Arabov was arrested in June 2006 at his Manhattan jewelry shop. Authorities accused him and others of conspiring to launder about $270 million in drug profits for the "Black Mafia Family," also known as BMF, a crime organization that operated out of the Detroit area beginning in the early 1990s.
The seven-year investigation resulted in the indictments of Arabov and 41 other people. Twenty-eight have pleaded guilty, eight are scheduled for trial Nov. 19 and the whereabouts of six others are unknown.
Federal authorities have said about 1,100 pounds of cocaine and $19 million in cash and other assets were seized beginning in 2000.
Arabov, a Russian immigrant also known as the "King of Bling", has been well-known in the hip-hop community since the 1990s.
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