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Tag: blackmail

  • Faye Grant’s Attorney Lashes Out At Stephen Collins Over Accusations Of Blackmail

    The controversy surrounding actor Stephen Collins and his alleged pedophilia has escalated with accusations that wife Faye Grant blackmailed him to get more money. Grant has lashed out at Collins’ camp through her lawyer, Martin Singer, who claims that the actor and his attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan are making “false and fabricated statements about Faye Grant to try to justify Collins’ conduct.”

    Kaplan is reportedly claiming that Grant repeatedly threatened Collins with the audio recording she made at one of their 2012 therapy sessions together, where Collins admitted he had sexually abused young girls. He supposedly accused Grant of threatening to leak the recording to media if Collins did not pay her “millions of dollars more than that to which she was legally entitled.”

    According to Daily Mail, Singer sent a letter to Kaplan on Friday threatening to take legal action for his comments. “It is malicious and outrageous that you would choose to spread defamatory lies accusing my client of supposedly engaging in extortion,” wrote Singer. “You are well aware of the fact that my client never used the tape at all in the dissolution proceedings. To the contrary, after your client refused to obtain treatment within a few months of the taping, my client gave the tapes to the NYPD and the LAPD.”

    Grant, 57, is also an actor and was married to Collins for 27 years before they divorced in 2012. It is believed that the secret audio recording she made of their therapy session in which Collins admitted his pedophilic tendencies was made in that same year.

    According to the New York Daily News, Grant had reached out in July 2012 to one of Collins’ victims after finding out about what he did. “I can only imagine the scars created from an adult behaving that way towards you,” Grant wrote in an e-mail to the woman. A source close to the NYPD told the publication that the victim was apparently a relative of Collins’.

  • Hackers Blackmail Domino’s Pizza

    Hackers Blackmail Domino’s Pizza

    Domino’s Pizza recently found itself threatened with the release of hundreds of thousands of stolen accounts to the internet.

    According to ITNews, a hacker group known as Rex Mundi had attempted to blackmail the Domino’s Pizza operations in France and Belgium with the release the account information of hundreds of thousands of customers.

    Allegedly they had the account information from 592,000 French customers and 68,000 Belgian customers.

    The customer information being held for ransom by the group includes the person’s name and address along with their telephone number, email address, and account password.

    The group was demanding €30,000 or $40,600 USD.


    Domino’s French Twitter account admitted that it was likely the hackers had the information and that a breach had occurred.

    The group was referred to as “seasoned professionals”. Even though the information was encrypted, Domino’s believes Rex Mundi probably had the ability to decode the information, passwords included.

    Rex Mundi’s own Twitter account has since been suspended.

    A spokesman for Domino’s tried to allay their customers’ fears by confirming that no banking or financial information was accessed by the hackers. That is because Domino’s does not hold on to payment information. Due to the way customer data is stored, names, phone numbers, and email addresses are the most vulnerable to hackers.

    Despite the ensuing headache, Domino’s Pizza have opted not to give into the blackmail attempt. Instead the company alerted the French authorities.

    Domino’s Pizza is the latest company targeted by Rex Mundi. The group previously released thousands of customer loan records after Americash Advance refused to pay them $15,000. They also attempted to blackmail a Belgian hosting firm named Alfanet.

    Though Domino’s has confirmed that it’s likely these individuals were able to get the information they hold, it’s not known how many customer account details Rex Mundi will release since they are unlikely to get their money.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Man Blackmailed After Responding to Craigslist Sex Ad with Naked Photo

    My mother always told me “Josh, never send naked selfies to people you don’t know on the internet.” That was her favorite mom warning, apart from “Josh, don’t blackmail people.”

    Moms are so smart.

    A Philadelphia man has pleaded guilty to second-degree theft by extortion and is looking at a 5-year prison sentence after he blackmailed a man who sent him naked photos of himself in response to a Craigslist ad.

    According to the New Jersey State Police, the victim (an unnamed New Jersey resident) responded to an ad for gay sex taken out by 42-year-old Steven J. Beisher. The victim’s response came in the form of a naked photo, which Beisher decided to use to blackmail the victim.

    According to the New Jersey Attorney General’s office:

    “Beisher found the victim’s telephone number and address and called him the following day, threatening to expose the victim to his wife and family if he did not pay Beisher money. Beisher called repeatedly to demand that the victim meet him at various locations in Philadelphia to make payments.”

    And it worked–at least for a while. Over the next 9 days, our victim made 7 payments to Beisher, totaling $1,950. I guess 7 times is enough, as our extortee refused to meet with Beisher for an eighth time, instead electing to report him to state police.

    It appears that theft, in all its forms, is Beisher’s thing. He has 8 prior convictions, ranging from burglary to receiving stolen property and even another theft by extortion charge.

    Crime doesn’t pay, and don’t send pictures of your dick to strangers. Thus ends today’s lesson.

    Image of Steven Beisher via NJ AG’s office

  • Whitney Houston FBI Report Details Extortion Scheme

    In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a 128-page report into the life of singer Whitney Houston.

    According to the Detroit Free Press, the report was part of an FBI extortion case that was closed before any charges were filed. The document shows that Houston was blackmailed in 1992, with a letter from a woman stating that details of her private life would be revealed if $100,000, and later $250,000 were not paid.

    Houston had told the FBI that the woman was “a friend.” Houston’s father, John Houston, later sent the woman a “confidentiality agreement” and paid her an amount of money which was redacted in the FBI document.

    The document also contains letters from adoring fans, some of which were of interest to the FBI because the agency was afraid certain fans might hurt someone because of their obsession. FBI agents were compelled to interview several of these obsessive fans, once going as far as Brussels, Belgium. In the cases detailed, these fans were determined to not have broken the law and did not appear to have actual plans for hurting anyone or extorting Houston.

    Houston died just over one year ago, on February 11, 2012. She was found unconscious in a bathtub in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The cause of death was later determined to be an accidental drowning related to heavy drug use.

  • Sextortionist: Richard Finkbiner Accused of Sexually Exploiting Kids Online

    The U.S. Department of Justice claims that Richard Leon Finkbiner of Brazil, Indiana put two juvenile boys in a horrific predicament; they were told that they would have to pose for sexual photos for the man or he would share racy photos of them on gay websites that were already in his possession.

    U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett claims that Finkbiner has “thousands of sexually explicit images and videos depicting hundreds of individuals” including “up to 100 … underage victims.”

    It is unclear how the suspect supposedly obtained provocative photos of the two boys but he met them by using online video chat websites between November 2011 and February 2012.

    If this man is convicted then this could be the largest case of online sexual extortion of children in the country’s history.

    According to one Queensland police report blackmailing children is becoming a more common tactic used by sexual predators, “There has been an increase in online offenders using threats such as hacking online profiles and email accounts and using blackmail techniques as a response to an increasingly empowered internet generation who are recognizing and reporting online grooming behavior to police agencies.”

    Sextortionists like Finkbiner will typically threaten to reveal some sensitive information about their victims unless they send them sexually explicit content or agree to meet them in person.

    In one example, a 15-year-old Sydney girl was blackmailed into posting images of herself to a 16-year-old boy overseas after he threatened to contact her friends on the web and create defaming stories about her sister.

    Out of fear she waited weeks before contacting the police.

    There are many campaigns and programs that are designed to inform youth of these dangers and parents can protect their children by monitoring their online activities.