Photo of Damon Dash by David Shankbone (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash was arrested in New York for failing to pay child support while in a courthouse to pay a different warrant relating to unpaid child support.
The problem stems from the fact that Dash has teenage children with two different women: Rachel Roy, with whom he has two daughters, and Cindy Morales, with whom he has a son. All together, he owed more than $400,000 to the two women, with more than $300,000 of this amount owed to Roy.
Because of these debts, which he incurred many years ago, there has reportedly been an arrest warrant outstanding against him for more than four years.
Dash told TMZ that he went to a Manhattan courthouse to pay both warrants. However, he insists that, after he paid more than one million dollars to clear one of the warrants, the police arrested him as soon as he stepped out of the courtroom. They not only handcuffed him but escorted him to a Bronx courthouse to pay the other warrant. There he reportedly paid another million dollars to clear this warrant, after which he was released.
He then left the court with his fiancée Raquel Horn, who is pregnant with another of Dash’s children. He further has an adult son with Linda Williams.
Joseph Fucito, who is a New York City sheriff, said, “We’ve been looking to arrest him since 2015.”
Unsurprisingly, Dash was not happy about his arrest. He said that he was “just like Jesus Christ” and that there “ain’t no money problems.”
However, just last week, Dash filed papers in a federal court indicating that his income was “virtually nonexistent” and that he was having trouble paying for expenses relating to his forthcoming child.
In 1995, Dash founded Roc-A-Fella Records with Jay-Z and Kareem Burke, which was purchased by Def Jam Recordings in 2004. He now owns BluRoc Records.