Remaining half of TomKat extortion team sentenced
I ran across this one on Dailynews.com this morning...
A West Hollywood man who pleaded guilty to attempting to extort $1.3 million from Tom Cruise in exchange for copies of stolen wedding photographs of the actor and his wife, actress Katie Holmes, is set to be sentenced today.
Marc Lewis Gittleman, a 34-year-old computer technician, pleaded guilty on Sept. 21 to a one-count criminal information alleging interstate transportation of stolen property. He is scheduled to be sentenced this afternoon by U.S. District Judge George King and could spend time in federal prison.
According to court documents, Gittleman kept copies of the photos after obtaining them from a damaged hard drive brought into his workplace by a photographer.
If you recall, The Smoking Gun broke this earlier this year. Gittleman was hooked up with a dude by the name of Hans David Schmidt, a purveyor of celebrity nudie pics to tabloids and skin mags. Schmidt, known as "The Sultan of Sleaze" got caught trying to shake down Maverick and Joey, or Mr. and Mrs. Cruise, as they're also known.
After he pleaded guilty to to transmitting threatening communications with intent to extort, Schmidt skipped his sentence by committing suicide in his condo.
The whole thing was, to put it mildly, profoundly weird.
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