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Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded threats in order to obtain an unfair business advantage is also a form of extortion.
Stephanie Anne Birkitt is an American attorney and former assistant to David Letterman on the Late Show with David Letterman. Although Birkitt frequently appeared on the program as a character named "Vicki", Letterman often called her by various other nicknames, such as "Smitty", "Kitty", "Monty", "Gunther", and "Dutch".
James Stuart Hall Jr. is an English former media personality and convicted sex offender. He presented regional news programmes for the BBC in North West England in the 1960s and 1970s, while becoming known nationally for presenting the game show It's a Knockout. Hall's later career mainly involved football reporting on BBC Radio. In June 2013, he was convicted of multiple sexual offences against children, effectively ending his media and broadcasting career.
Benjamin Brafman is an American criminal defense attorney and founder of the Manhattan-based law firm Brafman & Associates. Brafman is known for representing many high-profile defendants, including celebrities, accused Mafia members, and political figures.
Jenna Wolfe is a Jamaican-born Haitian and American journalist and personal trainer. From 2007 to 2014, she was a correspondent for NBC's Today, and Sunday co-anchor from 2007 to 2012 and news anchor for Weekend Today from 2012 to 2014. On September 12, 2014, Wolfe left the weekend Today show for a new role as lifestyle and fitness correspondent on the weekday Today show and NBC News.
Graeme Stephen Reeves is a deregistered former gynecologist and obstetrician from New South Wales, Australia, dubbed the Butcher of Bega in the press. Reeves was deregistered in 2004 for performing obstetric procedures at Pambula and Bega hospitals despite being banned from obstetrics, and in September 2008 was charged in relation to alleged sexual and indecent assaults and genital mutilation at Bega, Pambula and Richmond between 2001 and 2003. He was sentenced in relation to assaults in 2011.
Molly Shattuck is an American socialite, convicted sex offender and child rapist. She is the former wife of businessman Mayo A. Shattuck III. She came to national prominence when she became the then-oldest cheerleader on record for the National Football League when she began cheering for the Baltimore Ravens Cheerleaders at age 38.
Sextortion employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.
Robert Joel "Joe" Halderman is a television news writer, director, former producer for CBS News, and convicted felon. Halderman was found guilty of attempted extortion of talk show host David Letterman.
Earl Brian Bradley is a former pediatrician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and convicted serial child rapist. He was indicted in 2010 on 471 charges of molesting, raping, and exploiting 103 child patients. Some of the victims were as young as three months old. He was charged in April 2010 with an additional 58 offenses in relation to the abuse of 24 additional victims. He has been described by a number of reputable news outlets and commentators as "the worst pedophile in American history." Dr. Eli Newberger, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a pediatrician who has studied child abuse cases for almost 40 years, said Bradley's was "the worst pediatrician abuse case I've ever heard of." Bradley had access to an estimated 7,000 pediatric patients. According to a personal injury law firm in Baltimore, one of many representing class action plaintiffs, 1,400 families in the class action alleged abuse. Bradley was ultimately found guilty on all consolidated charges brought and was sentenced to 14 consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 165 years in prison on June 26, 2011. His conviction was affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court on September 6, 2012. In the wake of his arrest, it emerged that he had faced accusations of child abuse as early as 1995 in both Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Daniel Marino is an Italian American mobster and member of the Gambino crime family. He was identified as a member of the family's leadership panel, alongside John Gambino and Bartolomeo Vernace, in 2009.
Ocasio v. United States, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified whether the Hobbs Act's definition of conspiracy to commit extortion only includes attempts to acquire property from someone who is not a member of the conspiracy. The case arose when Samuel Ocasio, a former Baltimore, Maryland police officer, was indicted for participating in a kickback scheme with an automobile repair shop where officers would refer drivers of damaged vehicles to the shop in exchange for cash payments. Ocasio argued that he should not be found guilty of conspiring to commit extortion because the only property that was exchanged in the scheme was transferred from one member of the conspiracy to another, and an individual cannot be found guilty of conspiring to extort a co-conspirator.
The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal relates to the sexual abuse of hundreds of gymnasts—primarily minors—over two decades in the United States, starting in the 1990s. It is considered the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history.
Lawrence Gerard Nassar is an American serial child rapist and former family medicine physician. From 1996 to 2014, he was the team doctor of the United States women's national gymnastics team, where he used his position to exploit and sexually assault hundreds of young athletes as part of the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history.
Michael John Avenatti is an American former attorney currently incarcerated in federal prison for felony fraud and extortion. He is best known for his legal representation of adult film actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against then U.S. President Donald Trump, and his multiple convictions for attempting to extort sports apparel company Nike and defrauding and embezzling settlement money from a series of other clients. In the late 2010s, Avenatti appeared extensively on television and in print as a legal and political commentator, and as a representative for prominent clients.
The Vanderbilt rape case is a criminal case of sexual assault that occurred on June 23, 2013, in Nashville, Tennessee, in which four Vanderbilt University football players carried an unconscious 21-year-old female student into a dorm room, gang-raped and sodomized her, photographed and videotaped her, and one urinated on her face.
Joseph F. "Chip" Skowron III is an American former hedge fund co-portfolio manager of FrontPoint Partners LLC's health care funds. He was convicted of insider trading, for which he served five years in prison. He was also required to repay his hedge fund employer $32 million it had paid him in compensation, because he had been a “faithless servant.”
Paul Pisasale is a former mayor of the City of Ipswich in Queensland, Australia, and convicted extortionist. Pisasale was mayor of Ipswich from 2004 to 2017, making him one of Queensland's longest-serving mayors, and was last elected in 2016 with 83.45% of the popular vote. He resigned as mayor in 2017 following a raid on his office by the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission. He was subsequently charged with corruption in 2017. He was committed to stand trial on a number of other charges in 2019, including charges of sexual assault where he was accused of "unlawfully and indecently" assaulting an Ipswich woman, and charges of perjury. Pisasale subsequently pleaded guilty to these charges which included two counts of sexual assault, official corruption, unlawful drug possession, 27 counts of fraud, secret commission by an agent, and fraud of property.
On June 30, 2022, a ten-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio, United States, traveled to Indiana to get an abortion because abortion law in Ohio did not provide an exception for minor children who became pregnant because of rape. Her case drew national attention and commentary from public figures, due in part to its proximity to the June 24, 2022, decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states, including Ohio, to impose substantial limitations on abortion.
References
- ↑ Grace, Melissa; Huff, Richard (February 23, 2010). "Ex-WABC sportscaster Marvell Scott charged with raping 14-year-old". The New York Daily News. Retrieved February 23, 2010.
- ↑ "Report: Former sportscaster Marvell Scott pleads guilty in underage prostitute case - News | FOX Sports on MSN". msn.foxsports.com. Archived from the original on 2012-02-16.
- ↑ "5 Things to do This Weekend (June 26–28)".
- ↑ "Third arrest made in extortion scheme | Monroe County Office of the District Attorney". www.monroecountyda.com. Archived from the original on 2015-06-26.