Oprah
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Oprah Winfrey was the target of a foiled $1.5 million extortion plot, according to the FBI and other published reports.
While the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court against Keifer Bonvillain, 36, states that he had approached "a public figure and the owner of a Chicago-based company" and threatened to release potentially damaging recorded phone conversations about the person, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, citing unidentified sources, name Winfrey as his intended victim, the Associated Press reports.
Bonvillain, who is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Chicago on Monday, was arrested in Atlanta on Dec. 15, the day after he met an emissary with the intention of their exchanging money for the tapes, says the Sun-Times. After his arrest, Bonvillain was released on $20,000 bail.
In a phone conversation with the paper, Bonvillain said of the case, "There is nothing to it. It's nothing. It was a big mix-up." His attorney, Kent Carlson, told the Sun-Times he could not "confirm or deny" the specifics in the legal complaint against his client.
There has been no comment from Winfrey, her Chicago-based Harpo Productions Inc., or the U.S. attorney's office. The 52-year-old media mogul, who on Jan. 2 opened her $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henly-on-Klip, South Africa, was still outside the U.S. on Saturday, says the AP.
According to legal papers, Bonvillain met a California-based "business associate" of a Chicago-based company at a party more than two years ago, then recorded 12 hours of conversations with the employee about the owner and her business.
Although the complaint does not specify if Bonvillain had any direct contact with the business owner (which sources say was Winfrey but legal papers don't identify), it does say that in mid-October he sent her an e-mail, informing her that the employee said "awful things" about her.
In November, Bonvillain sent a letter saying he had tapes of the conversations, according to the FBI, which also alleges that Bonvillain told the associate he wanted to publish a book based on the tapes.
"There are a lot of people who would want these," Bonvillain is quoted as saying in the FBI complaint, which also claims he mentioned offers of $500,000 to $3 million he had received from tabloids and book publishers.
The associate, working in cahoots with the FBI, agreed to a $1.5 million price, wired Bonvillain $3,000 in earnest money and planned to meet him in the parking lot, according to the complaint. Agents arrested Bonvillain the next day.
compliments to People.com
While the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court against Keifer Bonvillain, 36, states that he had approached "a public figure and the owner of a Chicago-based company" and threatened to release potentially damaging recorded phone conversations about the person, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, citing unidentified sources, name Winfrey as his intended victim, the Associated Press reports.
Bonvillain, who is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Chicago on Monday, was arrested in Atlanta on Dec. 15, the day after he met an emissary with the intention of their exchanging money for the tapes, says the Sun-Times. After his arrest, Bonvillain was released on $20,000 bail.
In a phone conversation with the paper, Bonvillain said of the case, "There is nothing to it. It's nothing. It was a big mix-up." His attorney, Kent Carlson, told the Sun-Times he could not "confirm or deny" the specifics in the legal complaint against his client.
There has been no comment from Winfrey, her Chicago-based Harpo Productions Inc., or the U.S. attorney's office. The 52-year-old media mogul, who on Jan. 2 opened her $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henly-on-Klip, South Africa, was still outside the U.S. on Saturday, says the AP.
According to legal papers, Bonvillain met a California-based "business associate" of a Chicago-based company at a party more than two years ago, then recorded 12 hours of conversations with the employee about the owner and her business.
Although the complaint does not specify if Bonvillain had any direct contact with the business owner (which sources say was Winfrey but legal papers don't identify), it does say that in mid-October he sent her an e-mail, informing her that the employee said "awful things" about her.
In November, Bonvillain sent a letter saying he had tapes of the conversations, according to the FBI, which also alleges that Bonvillain told the associate he wanted to publish a book based on the tapes.
"There are a lot of people who would want these," Bonvillain is quoted as saying in the FBI complaint, which also claims he mentioned offers of $500,000 to $3 million he had received from tabloids and book publishers.
The associate, working in cahoots with the FBI, agreed to a $1.5 million price, wired Bonvillain $3,000 in earnest money and planned to meet him in the parking lot, according to the complaint. Agents arrested Bonvillain the next day.
compliments to People.com
Oprah Winfrey was shattered when a relative revealed in 1990 that she'd had a baby at 14, she says in the new issue of her magazine.
The February issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, has the theme, "My first" and Winfrey writes about her first betrayal: A family member's revelation to the National Enquirer that Winfrey gave birth as a teen to a baby who died in the hospital weeks later.
Winfrey writes that the relative, whom she doesn't name but whom the Associated Press identifies as her half-sister, Patricia Lloyd, "sat in a room, told them the story of my hidden shame and left their offices $19,000 richer."
When she found out, Winfrey writes, according to the New York Post, "I took to my bed and cried for three days. I felt devastated. Wounded. Betrayed. How could this person do this to me?"
Before the article came out, she says, "Only my family and closest friends knew. I would tell no one until I felt safe enough to share my dark past: the years I was sexually abused, from age 10 to 14, my resulting promiscuity as a teenager, and finally, at 14, my becoming pregnant."
She worried that if anyone found out about the pregnancy, it would damage her career: "I imagined that every person on the street was going to point their finger at me and scream, 'Pregnant at 14, you wicked girl ... expelled!' "
But in fact, she says, "No one said a word ... not strangers, not even people I knew. I was shocked. Nobody treated me differently. For 20 years, I had been expecting a reaction that never came.
"And I soon realized that having the secret out was liberating. ... What I learned for sure was that holding the shame was the greatest burden of all."
Source: People.com : The #1 Celebrity Site on the Web
The February issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, has the theme, "My first" and Winfrey writes about her first betrayal: A family member's revelation to the National Enquirer that Winfrey gave birth as a teen to a baby who died in the hospital weeks later.
Winfrey writes that the relative, whom she doesn't name but whom the Associated Press identifies as her half-sister, Patricia Lloyd, "sat in a room, told them the story of my hidden shame and left their offices $19,000 richer."
When she found out, Winfrey writes, according to the New York Post, "I took to my bed and cried for three days. I felt devastated. Wounded. Betrayed. How could this person do this to me?"
Before the article came out, she says, "Only my family and closest friends knew. I would tell no one until I felt safe enough to share my dark past: the years I was sexually abused, from age 10 to 14, my resulting promiscuity as a teenager, and finally, at 14, my becoming pregnant."
She worried that if anyone found out about the pregnancy, it would damage her career: "I imagined that every person on the street was going to point their finger at me and scream, 'Pregnant at 14, you wicked girl ... expelled!' "
But in fact, she says, "No one said a word ... not strangers, not even people I knew. I was shocked. Nobody treated me differently. For 20 years, I had been expecting a reaction that never came.
"And I soon realized that having the secret out was liberating. ... What I learned for sure was that holding the shame was the greatest burden of all."
Source: People.com : The #1 Celebrity Site on the Web
That was my first thought exactly. I would think that a half-sister would already have benefitted much more than $19,000 worth from Oprah's fame.
Unless maybe they were estranged, and she hadn't gotten a cent...?
Anyway, I can understand Oprah's fears, she comes from a different time and place, but the reality now is that Patricia revealed to the world one of the largest non-stories of the decade.
This is the first I had heard of it, and I expect I will have forgotten all about it in ten minutes, and I suspect I am not alone.
ITA. And as we know this was a different era when Oprah was a teen. I can't imagine the hell she went through with her abuse and then, as I have read, trying to hide her pregnancy. Then, several years later it comes all out again in a story completely blindsiding you.
that's a horrible thing to have told about you. even if it is true and even if you felt shame towards the pregnancy, i imagine losing a child is a pain you don't want to have splashed in the news. karma wins tho, bc that 19000 is surely gone and oprah keeps getting richer and (seemingly) happier.
awwww. it's so sad to hear what people will do for money nowadays 
i cant imagine how crushed Oprah must've been when she found out
i cant imagine how crushed Oprah must've been when she found outi agree this was a very bad thing to do to anybody much less your half sister. oprah has done some very nice things for people and i think that it is a shame she was hurt in this way but she has been part of revealing things on her show that are also hurtful to others.
there are people who come on the show and tell things about people in their lives and i am sure that someone out there is feeling betrayed also. she has made much more than $19,000 for revealing others secrets.
i am not trying to dis oprah but revealing secrets has been a part of her show, in my opinion.
there are people who come on the show and tell things about people in their lives and i am sure that someone out there is feeling betrayed also. she has made much more than $19,000 for revealing others secrets.
i am not trying to dis oprah but revealing secrets has been a part of her show, in my opinion.
From the Chicago Sun Times:
Oprah invites child molester to 'Color Purple' Premiere; Chicago paper calls invite 'a slap in the face'
Oprah's production is based on a horrible tale of the sexual abuse that was heaped on a young girl in the rural South. Besides being raped by a man she believed to be her father, Celie was given to a mean-spirited older man as his wife, and throughout the relationship, she was used as both a sexual object and a workhorse.
Oprah invites child molester to 'Color Purple' Premiere; Chicago paper calls invite 'a slap in the face'
Shortly after Oprah took her triumphant stroll, Kelly strutted down the red carpet, just like Mayor Daley and his wife, Maggie, had done earlier.
The irony is jarring.
To witness Kelly being treated as an honored guest at the premier of "The Color Purple" sickened me. It was a slap in the face of every woman who has gone through such abuse