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Jay Z recordings at heart of extortion allegations
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 22 April 2014
A producer called Chauncey Mahan was questioned over allegations of extortion on Friday in relation to a collection of master recordings that once belonged to Jay Z’s Roc-A-Fella record company that has been valued between $15 million and $20 million.
According to TMZ, Jay Z and his team thought that the collection of recordings made between 1998 and 2002 had been lost until Mahan recently made contact with Live Nation, the rapper’s joint venture partner in his current business venture Roc Nation.
Mahan allegedly told Live Nation that the recordings were in his storage unit in California and that he was thinking about auctioning them off to the highest bidder, but that he’d send them back to Roc Nation if they agreed to pay a $100,000 storage fee.
The story goes that Live Nation negotiated Mahan down to $75,000, but that when he met with reps from the company at the lock-up where the recordings were stored they had brought LAPD officers with them, who took him in for questioning.
TMZ says that Mahan voluntarily allowed police officers to take away the master recordings in question for safe storage while a judge determines ownership. The producer wasn’t actually arrested at the scene, though police are now investigating allegations he was trying to extort Jay Z and his business partners.