Rapper Lil Zay Osama was hit with a 14-month federal prison sentence Thursday after he left a modified handgun in an Uber in Queens — and his legal troubles won’t be over once he finishes that sentence.
The 27-year-old, whose real name is Isaiah Dukes, was sentenced Thursday by Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nina Morrison, after he pleaded guilty to possession of a machine gun in May.
Prosecutors were asking for 27 months, but his lawyer, Dawn Florio, asked the judge to cut the rapper a break because he’s already spent several months in the notorious MDC Brooklyn federal jail.
Judges often trim down sentences because of the atrocious conditions at the Sunset Park jail, where two men were fatally stabbed just six weeks apart over the summer. Florio was hoping for a seven-month sentence.
The Chicago rapper and some associates were heading to a Queens recording studio on Sept. 29, 2022, when their Uber driver noticed him handling a gun in the backseat. Dukes left the tricked-out weapon behind, and the driver called 911.
When police arrived, the driver led them to the studio and fingered Dukes as the man who had been holding the gun.
The feds initially charged Dukes on Sept. 30, 2022, but two months later, the case against him was dismissed without prejudice — which meant that prosecutors could revisit it at a later date.
Dukes boasted about the dismissal as a victory in an Instagram post. But this past January, the feds came back at him with a grand jury indictment, charging him with with possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered firearm.
“The defendant knowingly carried a fully automatic weapon — a pistol with a switch device whose only purpose is to make a dangerous weapon all the more deadly — and then carelessly left that gun in the back of a rideshare,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Thursday. “Today’s sentence serves as a reminder to anyone who may bring an illegal firearm, especially one that has been modified to increase its lethality, into New York City: There are serious consequences for your reckless actions.”
At the time of the indictment, Dukes was locked up in Dupage County, Ill., for another episode involving a machine gun in a car, according to prosecutors.
In that incident, he and two other men were driving in a blue Dodge in Oak Brook, Ill., on Dec. 13 when police there got a tip that the car was linked to an armed robbery of a jewelry store in New York, Illinois prosecutors allege.
The men led police on a high-speed chase before their capture, and the cops found a loaded Glock 29 with a laser, an extended magazine and a switch that converts the gun into a machine gun, plus a loaded Glock 19 with a 50-round drum magazine and a defaced serial number, prosecutors allege.
Dukes was wearing a $90,000 necklace tied to an armed robbery in New York, prosecutors charge.
That case is still pending.
Dukes is also wanted on two warrants, including one for failing to appear in a court in Wisconsin to face concealed-firearm charges, according to a filing by federal prosecutors.
