An aspiring rapper has been sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for illegally possessing a gun while filming a music video last year in Deerfield.
Ricardo Burgos, 31, performs under the name “Nation” and possessed a handgun while filming a music video in January 2016 inside a hotel room in north suburban Deerfield, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Burgos had previously been convicted of multiple felonies and was not legally allowed to possess a gun.
Burgos could be seen in the video “holding two firearms while rapping about selling drugs, committing acts of violence, and disrespecting law enforcement,” prosecutors said. He brought a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol to the West Side Austin neighborhood a short time later, where he was arrested by Chicago Police.
Burgos was arrested at 2:18 p.m. Jan. 8, 2016, in the 5200 block of West Congress Parkway, according to Chicago Police. As a result of that arrest, he was charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, resisting or obstructing an officer and multiple counts of manufacture or delivery of cocaine and heroin.
Investigators later learned that the gun had been reported stolen from a store in Indiana and was used in a shooting in Chicago two days before the music video was filmed, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Burgos pleaded guilty to one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a felon and one count of distribution of a controlled substance, prosecutors said. The drug count stemmed from Burgos selling 4 grams of crack cocaine and 1.4 grams of heroin to undercover police officers in 2015.
U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman sentenced Burgos to 188 months in prison.
He is currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to Federal Bureau of Prison records.
