Guilty Plea In JLo Video Extortion
One of two New Jersey men who were arrested after they allegedly tried to sell Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez's stolen wedding video back to the couple for $1 million pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempted grand larceny.
Tito Moses, 31, an ex-convict from Newark, admitted in Manhattan's state Supreme Court that he tried to get a $1 million ransom for the stolen video. He said he and an accomplice negotiated with a man they thought was a Lopez-Anthony representative.
The "representative" was in fact an undercover detective, prosecutors said.
Justice Bonnie Wittner promised Moses 1 and 1/2 to three years in prison for his guilty plea. She said she will impose the sentence after he is sentenced in a related, pending New Jersey case and that the terms will run concurrently.
A video copy of the celebrity couple's June 2004 wedding was in a laptop computer that was in Anthony's Cadillac Escalade when it was stolen in Linden, N.J., in October 2005. The car was recovered in Newark but the laptop was gone. The New Jersey case is related to the car theft.
A felony complaint filed by prosecutors said Moses and his alleged accomplice, Steven Wortman, 49, a retired postal worker from Sayreville, N.J., called a person at Marc Anthony's company and tried to sell the property back to the salsa star.
A New York City detective posing as a Lopez-Anthony associate had a series of negotiations with Moses and Wortman between Dec. 20 and Dec. 27, during which the men demanded $1 million for the laptop, the complaint said.
At one point, the complaint says, the detective rejected the $1 million demand and Wortman threatened to destroy the laptop and its contents, the complaint said.
The detective, when negotiating later with Moses, haggled him down to $250,000 and the defendant agreed to bring the laptop to a diner at Sixth Avenue and Grand Street, the felony complaint says. Police met the two men there and arrested them.
Wortman has pleaded not guilty to the charges of conspiracy, attempted grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, and his case is pending.