According to TMZ, Apollo Nida, who appears alongside his wife Phaedra Parks on the Real Housewives of Atlanta, was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in federal prison for cashing stolen checks and laundering more than $2.3 million through phony bank accounts.
TMZ reports that the Georgia judge who sentenced Nida said he cooperated with investigators by revealing criminal secrets.
By cooperating with authorities, Nida reduced his sentence from 30 years to eight years.
On Monday, Radar Online reported that lawyers for Nida requested that the Atlanta District Court change his status from Criminal History Category V to Criminal History Category IV.
His attorneys argued for a lesser criminal category, citing the 35-year-old’s history of three probation revocations, driving under the influence, and giving a false name to law enforcement – all before he turned 24-years-old. Apollo’s lawyers said:
“A criminal history category of V substantially overstates the seriousness of Mr. Nida’s criminal past, thus warranting a departure from the Guidelines range. Mr. Nida’s lengthy but early small-time criminal history is simply not in the same league as the “violent offenders, drug kingpins and perpetrators of far more serious offenses” that Criminal History Category V was designed to address.”
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