Jay Z was the victim of an extortion plot, which found an engineer attempting to sell lost master tracks back to Roc-A-Fella.
Jay Z was under the impression that he’d lost some very important masters from 1998-2002– until he was recently approached by a sound engineer to buy them back.
The recordings– which are valued between $15-20 million –had been missing since 2002, but it turns out a man named Chauncey Mahan had possession of many of them at his storage facility in Northridge, Ca.
Mahan, who worked as an engineer on plenty of Roc-A-Fella songs in the late 90s and early 00s, contacted Live Nation with a proposition– that they buy the masters back for a $100,000 “storage fee”, or he would auction them off himself.
Apparently, Mahan was talked down to $75,000 for his proposed storage services, but when he arrived at his facility to make the exchange, the feds were waiting for him.
Hov’s team had contacted the LAPD when they felt they were being extorted, and the cops subsequently took Mahan in for questioning. The police force has seized the tapes until ownership is proved in court.
As far as whether the engineer will go down for extortion, it will have to wait until the Beverly Hills PD conduct their investigation, but until then, he’s a free man.
