St. Louis Rapper Grimeyy Sentenced to 7+ Years on Gun Charge

Arthur Pressley, known as 30 Deep Grimeyy or simply Grimeyy, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years and eight months in federal prison after being caught with a loaded Beretta 9mm pistol — a crime made worse by his attempts to forge documents and manipulate witnesses. The 25-year-old St. Louis rapper and self-styled gang leader was stopped by police in a 2008 Pontiac G8 on Jan. 5, 2021, for a busted taillight and mismatched license plates — but what followed exposed a calculated effort to hide his illegal possession of a firearm.

During the traffic stop, officers found the Beretta 92FS 9mm pistol sitting next to Pressley. As a twice-convicted felon for unlawful use of a weapon, he is legally barred from possessing any firearm. Instead of coming clean, Pressley began texting the gun’s original purchaser, pressuring him to sign a fake bill of sale transferring ownership to someone else in the car — a transparent bid to escape culpability.

The scheme unraveled fast. On the first day of his trial for being a felon in possession of a firearm, Pressley produced a falsified copy of the bill of sale. But investigators had already gathered damning digital evidence: photos of Pressley with the gun on social media and stored in his phone, including one image that clearly showed the weapon’s serial number. Messages on his device also confirmed his repeated possession of the firearm from Oct. 4, 2021, through the day of the stop.

Under pressure, Pressley reversed course and pleaded guilty, cutting short the trial. His admission laid bare a pattern of defiance — brandishing a weapon he was forbidden to touch, then trying to bribe the paper trail. U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark handed down the 92-month sentence as a warning to others in violent street organizations who believe they operate beyond the reach of law.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had been tracking Pressley and his crew, 30 Deep, for over a year before the arrest. ‘ATF has no more important mission than working with our law enforcement partners to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals,’ said Frederic Winston, Special Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Kansas City Field Division. ‘We will continue to bring those who illegally acquire and possess firearms to justice.’

The case was jointly investigated by the ATF and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cassandra Wiemken and Jennifer Szczucinski prosecuted. Pressley’s fall from local rap prominence to federal prison underscores the razor-thin line between street image and federal time — a line he crossed with a gun, a lie, and a dead taillight.