Busted! Man Charged With Extorting Kevin Hart With Sex Video
May 2 2018, Published 6:55 p.m. ET
A man has been charged with attempting to extort comedian Kevin Hart by threatening to release a sex tape last year.
According to the L.A. County District Attorney’s office, Jonathan Todd Jackson is set to be arraigned Wednesday on charges of attempted extortion and extortion by threatening letter.
He was arrested on Monday. Prosecutors are asking for bail to be set at $100,000.
If convicted, Jackson faces four years in county jail if convicted.
Prosecutors say Jackson had a videotape of the actor with a woman in Las Vegas and demanded an undisclosed amount of money from Hart between Aug. 25 and Aug. 30. before he shopped the recording to different celebrity news websites.
Three days before the video was leaked on September 20, 2017, Hart posted an apology to his wife and children on Instagram.
“I’m at a place in my life where I feel like I have a target on my back,” he said in the video. “And I made a bad error in judgement and I put myself in a bad environment where only bad things can happen and they did. And in doing that I know that I’m going to hurt the people closest to me, who’ve I talked to and apologized to, that would be my wife and my kids.”
Before the sex tape scandal, the comedian was already under fire after RadarOnline.com exclusively revealed a completely different video which showed Hart canoodling with a mystery woman in Miami in July 2017.The two were sitting in the dark, inside a parked car outside the resort. A video showed the star was in the vehicle for over 20 minutes, and even climbed into the back seat to be closer to the busty brunette.
Hart addressed those rumors in his tour promo, saying: “I don’t even know who she is!”
As RadarOnline.com previously reported exclusively, Hart and his long-suffering wife Eniko Parrish were facing marital woes since the sex tape scandal — and he’s resigned to the possibility she’ll dump him eventually in the wake of his alleged cheating.
“Eniko has certainly been patient with him but she can change her mind at a moment’s notice and over the slightest infraction,” an insider told RadarOnline.com last month. “When your husband cheats on your while you’re pregnant, you definitely reserve the right to have that power.”
Hart, 38, admitted at the end of 2017 that he strayed on his then-expecting wife, Parrish, 33.
“It’s beyond irresponsible. There’s no way around it. The best way to do it is to address it right on,” he said on The Breakfast Club. “That’s Kevin Hart in his dumbest moment. That’s not the finest hour of my life.”
Added the insider: "Nobody who’s close to Kevin thinks this is going to work out in the end."
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