Top > Entertainment > 2007 > January > 2007-01-24

Man Attempts to Blackmail Oprah

It has been a busy week for television woman, Oprah Winfrey: after inaugurating a girls` school in South Africa and undergoing an AIDS test to set an example for the girls, she was forced to face up to a media scandal, with herself playing the main role. The FBI says a 36-year-old man from Atlanta named Keifer Bonvillain, had recently contacted Oprah in an attempt to extort $1.5 million from her. He threatened that if he won`t be paid he will release conversations he held with an employee of Oprah`s company, which he claims would damage her reputation.

Bonvillain met the employee over two years ago in a party in Los Angeles, where he claims he heard terrible things about Winfrey. About a month later, Bonvillain contacted another employee of the company and told him he had 12 hours of recordings of conversations and added that he received offers from several tabloids to purchase them from him for sums ranging from $500 thousand to $3 million. The employee was briefed by the FBI to agree to pay Bonvillain $1.5 million and set up a rendezvous a day later. Upon arrival, Bonvillain was arrested. "There is nothing to it," Bonvillain said in a statement he released to the press. "It`s nothing. It was a big mix-up."

Oprah is still in South Africa and has yet to comment on the affaire, neither has anyone else on her behalf and evidently prefers dealing with the South African children. Back in the States, many await Oprah`s comments, maybe in one of her up coming shows.