Fleecing Tom Cruise turned out to be a mission: impossible.
A Los Angeles judge on Thursday sentenced a man who had tried to extort $1.3 million from the movie star to two years' probation and fined him $3,000.
Computer technician Marc Lewis Gittleman pleaded guilty in August to one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, a felony that could have cost him five years in prison, after he admitted to trying to sell Cruise copies of stolen photos from the actor's 2006 nuptials to Katie Holmes.
Gittleman got his hands on hundreds of photos when a photographer dropped off a damaged hard drive containing the buzz-worthy mementos at Gittleman's place of business.
The data recovery expert then copied the pics onto his hard drive and contacted David Hans Schmidt, a celebrity-photo peddler who was known for his exploits in extracting money from famous folk who would rather keep certain images under wraps.
In handing down the relatively light sentence, U.S. District Judge George King said that he found it unlikely Gittelman would commit the same crime twice. Attorneys from both sides agreed that prison wasn't necessary.
"I brought unimaginable shame upon myself and my family," Gittleman addressed the court Thursday. "I'll be working the rest of my life to make it right"—unlike Schmidt, who was found dead in his Phoenix, Arizona, home in September, from an apparent suicide.
Schmidt had been under house arrest while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to sending communications for purposes of extortion. He was facing up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The Arizona-based dealer was the one who approached Cruise in 2006 and threatened to sell the wedding photos to the highest bidder if the Minority Report star didn't pay up. The actor's reps then lured Schmidt to a meeting with an undercover FBI agent, who promptly took him and Gittelman into custody.
"It is a mystery that—given your background—that you would allow yourself to succumb to this one instance of very poor judgment," Judge King told Gittelman in court.
The techie's lawyer called his client's crime "an impulsive act" that mainly reeked of "colossal bad judgment."