Extortion and Blackmail

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    Cassie Testifies Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Used Sex Videos as Blackmail

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    Ms. Ventura, Mr. Combs’s ex-girlfriend, said he threatened to use tapes of their sexual encounters, known as “freak-offs,” to control her behavior.Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, told a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday that her life with Sean Combs had its moments, but was largely filled with beatings, threatened blackmail and even a rape.During more than five hours of testimony in Mr. Combs’s sex trafficking and racketeering trial, Ms. Ventura recounted how he had stomped on her in the back of his car and how she suffered a gash above her eye when he threw her against a bed frame.She also recounted how, after the pair had dinner in 2018, Mr. Combs raped her in her living room.“I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she testified.At the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura said through tears that after she had broken up with Mr. Combs, the trauma remained and she enrolled in treatment for drug abuse. Even so, she said, she contemplated taking her life by walking into traffic. She said her husband stopped her.Ms. Ventura told the court she stayed with Mr. Combs despite beatings and other abuse partly because of the nagging, persistent fear that videos of their sexual encounters with male prostitutes, the hundreds of “freak-offs” that she said Mr. Combs enjoyed watching and recording, would be posted online.Hers was not idle anxiety based on what she viewed Mr. Combs might be capable of, she said, but the consequence of repeated threats he had made to use the material to damage her if she deviated from his wishes. In one case, she described sitting beside him on a flight when he displayed for her videos that she thought had been destroyed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z, Accused in Suit of Raping Minor with Sean Combs, Calls It Blackmail

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      The entertainer said the suit, which accuses him of assaulting an unnamed 13-year-old girl in 2000, was an effort to gain settlement money by putting forward “idiotic” claims.Jay-Z was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl with Sean Combs in a lawsuit filed Sunday by an unnamed plaintiff. He vehemently denied the allegation and accused the lawyer who brought the suit of trying to blackmail him with false claims.The allegations against the billionaire rapper and hip-hop mogul came as part of the flurry of litigation against Mr. Combs, who is facing federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges and at least 30 lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. One of those lawsuits, filed in October, accused Mr. Combs and an anonymous celebrity of raping the teen at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in New York in 2000.On Sunday, the plaintiff amended the lawsuit to name Jay-Z as the other celebrity, asserting in court papers that he and Mr. Combs took turns raping her after she arrived at the party and drank part of a drink that made her feel “woozy and lightheaded.” Jay-Z called the claims “idiotic” and said that he came from a world where “we protect children.” Mr. Combs has denied all allegations of sexual assault and misconduct and has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.The lawsuit was filed by Tony Buzbee, a personal injury lawyer in Houston, who has filed at least 20 sex assault lawsuits against Mr. Combs and used a phone hotline, Instagram and a news conference to find clients.In an extensive response, Jay-Z, 55, said he had received a demand letter from Mr. Buzbee appearing to seek a settlement but that the letter had the opposite effect: “It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!,” the statement read.The statement went on to say: “My heart and support goes out to true victims in the world, who have to watch how their life story is dressed in costume for profitability by this ambulance chaser in a cheap suit. You have made a terrible error in judgment thinking that all ‘celebrities’ are the same. I’m not from your world. I’m a young man who made it out of the project of Brooklyn. We don’t play these types of games.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2 Brothers Sentenced to More Than 17 Years in Prison in Sextortion Scheme

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      Two brothers from Nigeria helped run an online sextortion operation that prosecutors said resulted in the death of a high school student.A federal judge in Michigan on Thursday sentenced two brothers from Nigeria to 17 and a half years in prison for their roles in a social media sextortion scheme that claimed more than 100 victims across the United States and resulted in the death of a high school student.The brothers, Samuel Ogoshi, 24, and Samson Ogoshi, 21, who each pleaded guilty in April to one count of conspiracy to exploit minors, will be on supervised release for five years after completing their prison terms, prosecutors said in a news release.The brothers, who are from Lagos, Nigeria, were extradited to the United States from Nigeria in August 2023 after they were indicted in November 2022.The extradition marked a new chapter in cooperation with Nigerian authorities in extraditing perpetrators of this kind of scam. Last month, the Justice Department announced the extradition of two other Nigerian nationals on similar charges in Pennsylvania.A third defendant in the case, Ezekiel Robert, is pending extradition from Nigeria, prosecutors said.The brothers were sentenced in a case involving a popular relatively new scam the authorities call financial sextortion, in which scammers pose as young women on social media and send flirty messages to young men and teenage boys before soliciting nude photographs that they then hold as ransom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Aftermath of a U.K. Cyberattack: Blood Shortages and Delayed Operations

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      Several London hospitals, still reeling from a cyberattack last week, have made an urgent plea to medical students to help stem the disruption.Several London hospitals, still under significant strain more than a week after a cyberattack crippled services, have asked medical students to volunteer to help minimize disruption, as thousands of blood samples have had to be discarded and operations postponed.The ransomware attack on Synnovis, a private firm that analyzes blood tests, has crippled services at two major National Health Service hospital trusts, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ and King’s College, which described the situation as “critical.”According to a memo leaked in recent days, several London hospitals asked medical students to volunteer for 10- to 12-hour shifts. “We urgently need volunteers to step forward and support our pathology services,” said the message, which was reported earlier by the BBC. “The ripple effect of this extremely serious incident is felt across various hospital, community and mental health services in our region.”The attack also disrupted blood transfusions, and the N.H.S. appealed to the public this week for blood donors with O-negative blood types, which can be used in transfusions for any blood type, and O-positive blood types, which is the most frequently occurring blood type, saying it could not match patients’ blood at the same frequency as usual.While the N.H.S. has declined to comment on which group was suspected of carrying out the attack, Ciaran Martin, a former head of British cybersecurity, told the BBC last week that a Russian cybercriminal group known as Qilin was most likely the perpetrator. Synnovis said last week in a statement that it was working with the British government’s National Cyber Security Center to understand what had happened.Synnovis, in an email sent Monday to primary health providers, said that thousands of blood test samples would probably have to be destroyed because of the lack of connectivity to electronic health records. In a statement on Wednesday, Synnovis said that the I.T. system had been down for too long for samples taken last week to be processed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Former Mayor of Fall River, Mass. Is Convicted of Corruption

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      Jasiel F. Correia II, who at 24 was the Massachusetts city’s youngest mayor, was convicted of charges related to extorting marijuana vendors and defrauding investors.The former mayor of Fall River, Mass., who was elected at 23 after pitching himself as an ambitious entrepreneur and product of the city, was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of defrauding investors of more than $200,000 and extorting marijuana vendors.The former mayor, Jasiel F. Correia II, 29, used investor money from his tech start-up to pay for lavish goods, trips and clothing, according to an indictment. After becoming mayor of Fall River, which is about 50 miles south of Boston, in 2016, Mr. Correia used his position to gain bribes from marijuana vendors looking to establish their businesses in the city.When he was in college, Mr. Correia founded an app called SnoOwl, which was designed to help local businesses connect with a network of customers. Seven people invested about $360,000 in the app, of which Mr. Correia spent about $230,000 on designer clothing, jewelry, travel, “adult entertainment,” and a Mercedes, according to the indictment.Mr. Correia also used about $10,000 of investor money to pay down his student debt and to fund his political campaign.To conceal the theft, Mr. Correia denied investors access to financial records, lied to them with false updates and also lied to his then-girlfriend, on whom he spent thousands of dollars, telling her that he made his money from the sale of a different app, according to the indictment.After Mr. Correia became Fall River’s mayor, he took bribes from marijuana vendors in exchange for nonopposition letters, which are required in Massachusetts to obtain a license to operate a marijuana business in the state.Bribes from four vendors ranged from more than $75,000 to $250,000 in cash, campaign contributions and other payments, according to court documents.Mr. Correia was convicted on charges of wire fraud, falsifying tax returns and related counts of extortion. Mr. Correia, who is set to be sentenced in September, could face up to 20 years in prison for the wire fraud charges and up to 20 years for the extortion charges.The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Nathaniel R. Mendell, told reporters on Friday that the verdict was “a fitting end to this saga.”“He sold his office, and he sold out the people of Fall River,” Mr. Mendell said.Mr. Correia told reporters that he would appeal.“Eventually, the real truth will come out,” Mr. Correia said. “I will be vindicated, and my future will be very long and great.”Mr. Correia’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, who did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday, told reporters outside the courthouse on Friday that an appeal would most likely come after the sentencing, the television station WPRI reported.“We respect the jury’s verdict, but that’s what we have appeals courts for,” he said.Mr. Correia was indicted in October 2018 for wire fraud and falsifying tax returns, and then again in September 2019 in a superseding indictment for extortion conspiracy and extortion, in addition to other crimes.Mr. Correia, who was 23 when he was elected in 2015, became the city’s youngest mayor and promised to revitalize Fall River, a city that was once home to a booming textile industry but declined as manufacturing went overseas.Mr. Correia, the son of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants, was born and raised in Fall River and impressed voters with his ambition, confidence and loyalty to the city. In 2008, Fall River named him “Youth of the Year” for his work with teenagers addicted to drugs.By 22, Correia was a self-described entrepreneur with his app SnoOwl, which was released in 2015. He returned to Fall River after college, determined to expand the business there and run for local office.“I’m a product of Fall River,” Mr. Correia told The Herald News in Fall River in 2014. “I’m young, I’m ambitious and I’m a hard worker. I want to see myself and Fall River succeed.”In a special election in March 2019, Mr. Correia was voted out of office but then voted back in on the same ballot. In a general election in November 2019, he ran for re-election and lost.Maria Cramer contributed reporting. More