Skip to main content

Chris Brown Charged for Owning Pet Monkeys

By Lisa M. Schaffer, Esq. on December 31, 2018 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Chris Brown is in some serious trouble. This ain't no monkey business! The rap star was charged with two counts of having a restricted species without a permit, and faces six months in jail. CB must not have been able to resist posting an adorable video of his daughter, Royalty, with alleged pet capuchin monkey, Fiji, back in December of 2017. Brown's defense? It's not his monkey!

Selling Out Your Daughter's Pet?!

Brown claims Fiji belongs to his relatives out in Las Vegas, and that the video was taken there, and not at his house in Los Angeles. This seems odd, since the monkey was taken into custody by California fish and game wildlife agents in Los Angeles. We hope Brown is telling the truth. He already lost part of his credibility when he confessed to beating his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, back in 2009. Denouncing his own pet, and throwing relatives under the bus, just to save himself would do little to help his public image.

Brown Has a Teflon Coating When It Comes to the Law

Brown has been involved in some seriously interesting legal scuffles in the recent past, but seems to get off without much ado. In the Rihanna situation, where he plead guilty for allegedly beating, choking, and biting the young female rapper, Brown only received five years of probation and six months of community service.

Brown also allegedly jumped a fellow rapper, Frank Ocean, over a parking spot in 2013, but the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department close the case without incident. In 2012, Brown was involved in a fight at Greenhouse, a Manhattan bar, with Drake over Rihanna. And maybe that's what Brown's relatives should be concerned about. After getting off without a scratch in that bottle-throwing bar-fight incident, it turned out the only people marred in the incident were bystanders. Pro basketball player Tony Parker suffered a serious eye injury and sued the company that runs the lounge. The city of New York stepped in, shut down the club, and filed 14 charges against the club, and threatened the drinking establishment with losing its liquor license. The bar turned around and sued the city for the $264,000 per week in lost profits from the shutdown. And Brown walked away from the whole thing, clean as a whistle.

Brown has hired his favorite attorney, celebrity-lawyer Mark Geragos, to defend him in the monkey incident. Geragos historically does his job well, getting Brown mere probation in the Rihanna situation, as well as some other interesting wildlife lawsuits, such as the one involving Amphit and Kulbir Dhaliwal, the two survivors of the tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, where the two actually received a settlement of $900,000 from the zoo. Let's see if he can work his magic again for Brown.

Related Resources:

Copied to clipboard