Second man pleads guilty to role in J-Lo video ransom plot
A man arrested after he and an accomplice tried to sell Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez’s stolen wedding video back to the couple for $1m (€786,000), pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny.
Steven Wortman, (aged 49), a retired postal worker, admitted in Manhattan’s Supreme Court that he and Tito Moses, 31, tried during telephone negotiations to get amounts ranging from $250,000 (€196,000) to $1m (€786,000) for the stolen video.
When Justice Bonnie Wittner asked Wortman whether he and Moses demanded the money in telephone calls between December 20 and 27, 2005, “in exchange for not releasing (the video) to the general public”, the defendant replied: “Sorrowfully, yes.”
Wortman pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny in exchange for a sentence of three years’ probation. Wittner postponed sentencing to August 4.
A video copy of Lopez and Anthony’s June 2004 wedding was in a laptop computer that was in Anthony’s Cadillac Escalade when it was stolen in New Jersey in October 2005. The salsa star’s car was recovered in Newark but the laptop was missing.
Prosecutors said Wortman and Moses, an ex-convict from Newark, called Anthony’s production company and talked to a man they thought was a representative of the celebrity couple. That “representative” was in fact an undercover detective.
Moses pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny two weeks ago in exchange for a sentence of 18 months to three years in prison.
Moses also faces trial in New Jersey charged with the theft of Anthony’s vehicle.
