Tekashi 6ix9ine Is Going Back to Jail for Violating His Probation With Drugs & Assault

Tekashi 6ix9ine is going back to jail.

According to a spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, the rapper (Daniel Hernandez) was sentenced on Friday (Dec. 5) to three months in lockup for once again violating his probation from a blockbuster 2018 racketeering case. This time, Tekashi was caught with cocaine and MDMA and admitted to assaulting a man who taunted him about flipping on his former Brooklyn gangmates during a recent trip to the mall in Florida.

The sentence, imposed by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in federal court, is the culmination of many run-ins between the rapper and the law. Back in 2018, he was arrested and pleaded guilty to nine racketeering, gun and drug charges related to his time in the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods.

Tekashi admitted to being involved in a slew of violent incidents targeting rival rappers, including a 2017 assault of Trippie Redd, and he testified against his former gang associates at a high-profile trial in 2019. In exchange for that cooperation, Judge Engelmayer sentenced him to just two years in prison rather than the decades his charges carried. 

The rapper was released in 2020 after serving even less than those two years due to health risks from the then-novel COVID-19 pandemic. By the fall of 2024, Tekashi was just months away from concluding a five-year supervised release term when he was charged with a host of violations, including using methamphetamine, failing to appear for drug tests and traveling to Las Vegas without permission.

He admitted to these violations, and Judge Engelmayer sentenced him to 45 days in jail plus another year of supervised release. He got out last December, but was caught again in March for violating his probation by possessing cocaine and MDMA. Then came the Florida mall assault in August, which prosecutors classified as a misdemeanor. He’s been on house arrest since September.

In a sentencing recommendation last month, federal prosecutors said Tekashi had “violated the court’s trust” and needed to go back to jail so that cooperators would know they are “they are not above the law.” Tekashi’s lawyer, Lance Lazzaro, advocated instead for additional home detention.

Lazzaro did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.