Ostrava rapper Hard Rico's sentence raised to five years in Czechia

The High Court in Olomouc has increased the sentence of Ostrava rapper Hard Rico (real name Enrico Pešta): he must now spend five years in prison. He committed the crime as part of an organized group. His accomplice Miroslav Cichý had a year added by the court as well, bringing his sentence to six years.

What the court decided for the others

Karel Meca, who received a year less than Cichý, had his sentence left unchanged. Laura Červeňáková (21), the rapper's girlfriend at the time, saw her three-year unsuspended sentence replaced with a suspended one and a five-year probation period. Three of the defendants were also ordered to pay a fine of 20,000 crowns.

All four admitted guilt. Only a fifth defendant refused to do so, and his case is being heard separately. The prosecutor demanded tougher punishment for everyone. Pešta asked for three years suspended and a fine of five million crowns, Červeňáková also asked for a suspended sentence, and the other defendants sought milder sentences.

How the money was extorted

According to the court, Pešta devised and organized the whole thing. In March last year he demanded money from an acquaintance. The victim was lured into an apartment by the rapper's girlfriend. There the group used force and threats to make him withdraw 100,000 crowns from an ATM and hand them over, and then demanded that he bring another two million.

They threatened that if he did not bring the money within a week, he would “disappear in the forest.” Hard Rico himself, the court established, threatened to stab him in the neck. Threats were also made against the victim's family. Police detained the offenders as two of them, Pešta among them, were on their way to collect the first million crowns. The rapper spent four months in custody and was released after posting bail of 750,000 crowns.

“It opened my eyes”

In court Pešta said: “What happened cannot be undone, I am sorry and ready to face the consequences. I do not identify with who I used to be. In detention I understood what life is about. It opened my eyes.” According to him, his family is waiting for him at home, and his fiancée is expecting a child. He also said he had changed his stage name and now uses only the name Rico.

The court remained unmoved. Presiding judge Daniel Plšek explained that the defendants' degrees of responsibility had to be distinguished: Pešta devised everything and assigned the roles, and admitting guilt does not erase the fact that he previously led a less than blameless life. The court therefore considered a sentence at the very bottom of the basic range, that is, five years, appropriate. In Cichý's case the court took into account that his criminal record lists ten entries, including extortion, and that he was on probation at the time of the offense. Therefore, as the judge noted, a harsher sentence for the accomplice than for the organizer is justified in his case.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz