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Yoko Driver Indicted
How's this for instant karma.
Yoko Ono's longtime driver Koral Karsan, accused of trying to blackmail her for $2 million, was indicted Tuesday on a count of grand larceny and held without bail after state Supreme Court Justice Michael Ambrecht deemed him a flight risk. Prosecutors also claim the 50-year-old Turkish immigrant is in the country illegally.
Karsan entered a not guilty plea and was ushered from the courtroom in handcuffs. Ono was not present.
The chauffeur was arrested in New York last Wednesday after he allegedly delivered a letter to Ono in which he reportedly threatened to release recordings and photos of the Beatle widow in "private moments" unless she forked over $2 million.
Karsan also claimed in the letter, which was delivered to Ono's Dakota apartment building on Dec. 8—the 26th anniversary of John Lennon's murder—and read in court last week, that he had people "on standby waiting to kill the victim on his orders," and that he was planning on fleeing to Turkey to pen a tell-all about Ono.
While two small business owner friends put up Karsan's $250,000 bail, Mark Thorn, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's federal office, said that officials issued a "detainer," or warrant, to hold Karsan while they investigated his immigration status.
Should officials find that he has been in the country illegally, even if he is acquitted of the charge or released on bond, he will go directly into the custody of the immigration officials and could potentially face deportation.
Karsan's lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, said that his client, who has worked for Ono for at least six years, entered the country in 1992 on a tourist visa and, the following year, obtained a work visa as an executive of a Turkish import-export business.
"He has worked nonstop since then to get a green card," Gottlieb said. "The question is whether that was resolved properly.
"We know that he at least began the process of obtaining permanent resident status."
For his part, Karsan maintains his innocence.
In a jailhouse interview with the New York Daily News last week, he claims the extortion plot was a setup orchestrated by Ono to prevent him from filing a sexual-harassment lawsuit against the 73-year-old.
"She's using everything against me," he told the paper.
Ono's publicist, Elliot Mintz, dismissed Karsan's remarks, saying, "We will have the opportunity to hear exactly what he said in the appropriate forum."
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