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Criminal Law Keyed to Osler
United States v. Coss
Citation:
677 F. 3d 278 (6th Cir. 2012)Facts
Defendant met John Stamos on a vacation in Florida in 2004 at a night club for those over 18-year-old, though the defendant was only 17 years-old. Defendant gave Stamos her phone number and the next day Stamos invited her and a friend to a guided tour of Walt Disney World. They also attended a party at Stamos’s hotel room after where there was alcohol and illegal drugs used. Pictures of Stamos and the defendant were taken and Stamos gave the defendant his email address before the end of his trip. The two emailed for five or six years back and forth and Stamos characterized their relationship as friends. Defendant flew to Chicago to visit him once as well.
In 2008 the defendant started dating Scott Sippola and the two created a plan to obtain money from Stamos in exchange for the photos. They created two fake people to correspond with Stamos, “Jessica T.” and “Brian L.” First, in September of 2009, they created an email address for “Jessica T.” and emailed Stamos from it claiming that he got her pregnant from a sexual encounter they had on vacation. Stamos’s lawyer responded to “Jessica T.” with a cease and desist letter and no further emails came from the “Jessica T.” account.
Second in October of 2009, Cosss emailed Stamos that somebody named “Brian L.” alleged that he had bad photos of Stamos from a party in Florida from 2004, and that if he was not paid for them, it he would sell the photos to tabloids. Coss asked Stamos for his help in resolving the matter. Coss then suggested that Stamos deal with “Brian” by himself. By the time “Brian” began email correspondance with Stamos, his lawyer had the FBI involved and the agency advised Stamos’s communication from that point forward. They settled on $680,000 for the photographs and that they would meet in a private airport outside Marquette, Michigan to exchange the cash. The defendant and Sippola were arrested near the scene of the exchange site. They were both charged and convicted with extortion and using threats to injure reputation in order to extort money.
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