Jake Paul’s mother has opened up about the terrifying moment FBI agents raided her son’s $8 million California mansion.
The YouTuber-turned-boxer property was the subject of an FBI investigation, as a SWAT team in armoured vehicles arrived at the premises to search for evidence that Paul was involved in looting.
Paul and his friend, graffiti artist Arman Izadi, had been arrested at the Scottsdale Fashion Mall in June 2020 and were charged with trespassing and unlawful assembly after filming a mob ransacking the property. Some rioters claimed that they were protesting the murder of George Floyd, who was killed in a police arrest in Minneapolis just days prior to the Scottsdale incident.
Paul and Izadi denied wrongdoing, but police had received ‘hundreds of tips’ that the YouTuber had been involved, and so a raid on the 29-year-old’s property ensued, with news helicopters capturing federal officers removing several firearms from the mansion.
However, no arrests were made as Paul was not home, and the charges against him and Izadi were eventually dropped.
Social media star Paul had just made his professional boxing debut in a win against fellow YouTuber AnEsonGib in January 2020, and has since gone on to turn the world of boxing upside down.
In the five years that have followed, Paul has had high-profile fights against UFC icons Nate Diaz and Anderson Silva, boxing legend Mike Tyson, and most recently, a £140 million clash against Anthony Joshua — a sixth round KO defeat for Paul in Miami last month.
Jake Paul’s Mother Reveals Life-Changing Impact of the Raid on Her Son
But despite all that success, the chaos and fear caused by the raid on Paul’s mansion has lived long in the memory of the boxer’s mother, Pam Stepnick, who described the terrifying ordeal in her new book, ‘F**k the Pauls’.
An excerpt read: “My ears rang with the news when Ted told me the FBI was raiding Jake’s home. I ran out of my dermatologist appointment and sank to the floor in the building’s stairwell. My heart was racing.
“After the family text bombardment during Jake’s last controversy (the Covid party), I decided to get ahead of their good intentions. This time, I texted them with the news about Jake, telling them not to freak out when they saw the headlines.”
Stepnick also recalled the sheer level of attention on her family, who had been well accustomed to controversy thanks to the online fame of both Jake and his brother Logan. She wrote: “I knew my son had not done anything that merited the freaking FBI’s attention, much less the whole country’s attention. The story was picked up in national publications. I was unraveling.
“I had always been the rock and the glue that holds our family together, but the FBI? This was bigger than anything we had ever experienced up until this point in our family’s wild history.
“The FBI searched Jake’s home, looking for God knows what. As I watched helicopters circle around his mansion, I thought, ‘What the hell is happening?’
“FBI agents carried guns out of the Calabasas home along with video equipment, cell phones, cameras, and laptops. In the days following the raid, my family stared into the abyss, devastated, afraid, and deeply humbled.”
The boxer’s mother also expressed her frustration with the whole incident, arguing Jake’s fame was a motivating factor behind the raid.
Stepnick said: “When I saw video footage of the FBI confiscating Team 10 cameras (the social media label Jake had founded) and laptops on the news over and over and over again, I was disgusted. In my heart, I knew there were no bad intentions on Jake’s part.
“I watched the video while shaking my head. This investigation will go nowhere. There’s nothing to find. And I was right. The charges were dropped. I was frustrated. It felt like another media grab.
“At a time when all eyes were on the internet, Jake’s name meant more clicks.
“But this series of events caused Jake to take stock of his life. Finally, he had to course correct.”
‘The Problem Child’ has gone on to amass a professional record of 12-2 and become one of the richest boxers in the history of the sport.
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