2 years for Crawford blackmail

2010-03-09 20:01

Kirccheim Unter Teck - A 26-year-old German was sentenced on Tuesday to two years' prison for blackmailing former US supermodel Cindy Crawford.

The defendant admitted to the court that he had used a photo of Crawford's daughter to extort money from the fashion icon after he was deported from the US to Germany last year.

The photo shows Crawford's daughter at the age of seven, posing bound and gagged on a chair.

The man had threatened to sell the picture to the press if Crawford did not meet his demand of $137 000.

"The blackmail attempt was well advanced, and misfired," said presiding judge Joachim Spieth. The defendant is thought to have acquired the picture, apparently taken during a game of 'cops and robbers', from a nanny in the Crawford household last summer.

He initially received $1 000 from Crawford's husband, night club owner Rande Gerber, but argued that this was an "indemnity" payment, as he had initially wanted to prove that the nanny was unreliable.

Months later, the man - who had a history of theft, assault and drug abuse - was taken into US custody and deported back to Germany, where he began to telephone the Crawford family demanding increasingly larger sums of money.

The judge said the defendant had acted out of revenge, as he held Gerber responsible for his deportation.

After being forced to leave his girlfriend behind in the US, the man had planned to use the money to bring her to Europe, so they could start a new life.

The blackmailer eventually turned himself in to the police last November.

"This story is amateur in parts, and certainly not professional," Spieth summarised the case.

- SAPA

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