EXCLUSIVE: Tiger Woods Reps Tried To Pay Off Affair Witness
Dec. 10 2009, Published 10:40 a.m. ET
Tiger Woods' representative offered $200,000 to try to pay off a witness with detailed knowledge of his affair with Rachel Uchitel.
RadarOnline.com is also reporting exclusively that they hired a private investigator and tried to dig up dirt on Woods' accusers in an early attempt to discredit them and bury the scandal.
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Ashley Samson, the first person to publicly reveal that Tiger cheated with party girl Rachel, says the golfer's reps offered her $200,000 to change her story and deny that Tiger was having an affair with Uchitel.
The National Enquirer broke the story of Woods' affair with Uchitel, starting a sequence of events that has now led to numerous women revealing their sexual relationships with the married 33-year-old golf legend.
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Uchitel denied the affair at first until Team Tiger silenced her with a deal.
And Samson says in the new issue of the Enquirer: "Tiger Woods' people offered me $200,000 to change my story and deny he was having an affair with Rachel." This was before Tiger finally issued a statement vaguely acknowledging that he had been unfaithful.
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Samson adds: "He wanted me to say that I was not telling the truth about them and that I was withdrawing my statements he was cheating on his wife with Rachel."
RadarOnline.com has independently confirmed with a high-level source that Samson was offered $200,000 in Tiger's damage control effort. But the source, who has ties to Team Tiger, says the money was for Samson to remain silent instead of recant.
But RadarOnline.com has also learned that Tiger's people hired a private investigator to dig up as much dirt as possible on all of Tiger's accusers in the early stages of the scandal, hoping that if they could discredit the accusers they could control the scandal.
It turned out to be a bad miscalculation as more women who had affairs with Tiger went public with their stories leaving his image and marriage in tatters.