• From extorting famous athletes to ¬¬¬¬¬¬using footage of infidelity to ruin someone’s
life, we count seven blackmail attempts that went horribly wrong!
7 – Jaromir Jagr, • This has got to be the worst ever attempt
to get money out of a professional athlete.
A young woman tried to blackmail NY Rangers star Jaromir Jagr using a selfie she’d taken
after spending the night with him.
Only problem was: Jaromir didn’t care.
• Katerina Provaznikova wanted $2,000 or she’d go public, ruining his image and his
marriage.
Except, err, he wasn’t married.
Wasn’t even in a relationship.
Nope, this forty-three-year-old bachelor was more than happy for the world to know he could
still pull eighteen-year-old models.
• Katerina assumed he was bluffing and posted the photo online.
The funny part is that even though Jaromir was single, Katerina wasn’t.
So she effectively made Jaromir look like a stud, outed herself as a cheater and became
an internet laughing stock.
6 – Framed and Extorted, • A serial killer used blackmail tactics
to implicate innocent people in his crimes.
Using poison, physician Thomas Neill Cream left a trail of victims across the U.S. and
UK.
• While working as a physician, Thomas realised poisoning his patients was more fulfilling
than curing them.
He was eventually caught, but his brother helped him escape his life sentence by paying
off the officials.
• Thomas then took his murder show to London.
But here comes the twist.
Poisoning victims no longer gave Thomas a thrill, so he started extorting important
figures in the community.
Doctors and members of Parliament were his targets.
He claimed he had evidence that they were behind his crimes, but that he’d make it
all go away for the tidy sum of £1,500.
• Thomas soon came unstuck when he tried to pin his patient’s natural death to a
prominent doctor.
Thomas’s threatening note was taken to police and they eventually blew the whole operation
wide open.
5 – Wrong Acronym, • If you’re going to impersonate a gang
member and extort someone the least you could do is get the gang’s name right!
That was the mistake an Australian man made while threatening a completely innocent man.
• Ryan Selby showed up at a stranger’s home posing as a member of the biker gang
‘Finks’.
He told his victim he was there to collect a $1,000 debt his brother had supposedly chalked
up.
He also vandalised his victim’s car to scare the shit out of him.
• But Ryan came unstuck when he mistakenly referred to the gang by the acronym ‘MYLF’.
What he’d meant to say was ‘SYLF’ – or ‘Support Your Local Finks’.
His victim immediately knew something was up.
When asked to clarify what gang he was from, Ryan nervously said, ‘The one that starts
with M…
You work out the rest.’
• Police eventually charged him with aggravated blackmail and property damage.
Probably threw in an extra charge for being a dumb fuck.
I mean, who doesn’t know that ‘MYLF’ stands for ‘Mom I’d Like to Fuck’?
4 – Blackmailing Wife’s Lovers, • Attorney Ted Roberts found out his wife
had been cheating on him with five different men.
Instead of getting a divorce, he stayed with her and used proof of her infidelity to blackmail
her lovers.
• The men were all married corporate executives so their lives would basically fall to shit
if they were found out.
Ted knew this and threatened to go public – unless the men made charitable donations
to the Bank of Ted.
• By then Ted’s wife had recommitted to him and the couple managed to extort $155,000
from the men.
That is until one of Ted’s associates found evidence of what they were up to and turned
them over to the authorities.
They were charged with blackmail and extortion.
3 – Joe Francis, • I bet you thought there was nothing more
to Paris Hilton than handbag Chihuahuas and reality TV appearances.
Well, it turns out the airhead socialite actually foiled a blackmail attempt!
• The target was Joe Francis, the man behind the video phenomenon ‘Girls Gone Wild’.
‘Woo!
Spring Break!’
In 2004, a masked intruder broke into Joe’s house, tied him up and stripped him naked.
He then posed Joe with a dildo and took compromising photos.
Poor Joe had a gun put to his head and was made to tell a camera that he was ravenous
for the D. Like Liberace gay.
Pretty fucked up.
• After a naked joyride, Joe broke free and notified the police.
But his ordeal wasn’t over.
The home invader soon contacted him and demanded $500,000 or he’d go public with the tape.
• Enter everyone’s favourite crime fighter, Paris Hilton!
Joe and Paris met months later at some party for rich assholes.
Paris told him she’d overheard a conversation in a club.
She knew Joe’s blackmailer was a man named Darnell Riley.
Darnell was a dirtbag who’d wormed his way into the social elite after spending his adolescence
behind bars.
Police used this information to charge Darnell, sending him right back to prison.
Then Paris was like ‘Oh my god!
Victory margaritas for everyone!’
2 – Mistaken Identity, • A young man blackmailed a complete stranger
after she mistakenly sent him nude photos.
The thirty-six-year-old Indian woman was missing her husband, who was away on a business trip.
She exchanged a few text messages with him and noticed he was feeling frisky.
He asked her to send some naughty pictures and she complied – having no idea this man
wasn’t actually her husband.
• It turned out the phone company had mistakenly issued her husband’s phone number to some
twenty-year-old horn dog.
The husband hadn’t formally cancelled or switched his number; he just hadn’t used
it in three months, so his phone provider thought yep, okay, we should totally assign
this number to someone else without telling the original owner.
• The story should have ended there, with this lucky perv taking it no further.
Instead he steered the situation into darker territory, demanding the woman send him 10,000
rupees or he’d upload the images online.
• Fortunately it didn’t come to that.
Police were able to track him using his phone number and he was promptly arrested.
It turned out he was also the son of a police constable.
Some good values being instilled there.
1 – Bad Romance, • What do you get when you take a university
romance and add adultery and blackmail?
One fucked up situation.
Months after meeting her, a guy slept with his girlfriend’s mother, then threatened
to ruin her marriage unless she complied with his demands.
• Katia Masood met Akashdeep Singh while studying at Australia’s Macquarie University.
Things were going great, so Katia brought him home to meet her parents.
It turned out Katia’s mum Anita was so fond of the charming bastard that she ended up
in bed with him.
• It would’ve been a one-off mistake – if Akashadeep hadn’t filmed it.
By threatening to make the footage public, Akashadeep forced Anita to take him on long
drives, pay him thousands of dollars and give him sex whenever he wanted.
He physically threatened her and promised to ruin their lives if she refused.
• This went on for a whole year until eventually Anita was forced to own up to her mistake
and involve the cops.
Akashadeep was charged with blackmail and intimidation and a magistrate suggested he
must’ve had some mental health issues.
Sounds like the understatement of
the fucking century!