$1.2 million laptop reward to be paid by rapper, court orders

(Stock photo)

Grammy-nominated rapper Ryan Leslie has again been ordered by a court to pay a $1.2 million reward for the return of his stolen laptop.

The R&B singer initially offered a $20,000 reward in 2010 after a backpack that contained the laptop was taken from a car transporting him between performances in Germany, according to the Christian Post.

In addition to the laptop, which contained files from a recording session, the backpack held an external hard drive, jewelry and cash.

With no leads, Leslie eventually increased the reward to $1 million for the intellectual property stored on the computer’s hard drive, his attorney David DeStefano told ABC News.

DeStefano said, “They’re different from just an MP3.  MP3s are nothing for a producer or a studio engineer.  They can’t do anything with them.  They need the session files — these were his compositions.”

A month after the reward was increased, a German man named Armin Augstein came forward after saying he found the backpack in a garbage bag in a forest.  After bringing the laptop home, Augstein says he found Leslie’s passport, then learned about the reward after searching online.

However, Leslie tells The Inquisitr that the files were no good — and that he shouldn’t have to pay the reward because it was intended for the files.

“When I plugged in that hard drive to access everything that I had lost, the music just wasn’t there. I couldn’t access anything,” Leslie said.