Seagal Implicated in Threats

Could Steven Seagal really be involved in something that "reads like a bad screenplay"?

A suspect in the ongoing Seagal-Mafia extortion case claims Seagal--not a mafioso thug, as originally believed--ordered the recent threats against a Los Angeles Times reporter.

Alexander Proctor is the man charged with intimidating Anita Busch, the journalist who was digging into charges that a Mafia associate (and Seagal's onetime producing partner) was extorting money from the fading action hero. Proctor, who remains jailed without bail, told an FBI informant that Seagal was behind the threat, according to court documents released Friday.

Proctor, a 59-year-old ex-con, says in the documents that the Out for Justice star wanted to dole out his own brand of justice by asking Anthony Pellicano, a well-known Hollywood P.I., to have someone threaten Busch. Seagal allegedly had two reasons to target Busch: to garner sympathy for himself and to make his ex-partner, Julius Nasso, look bad. Proctor was allegedly hired to carry out said threat.

"He wanted to make it look like the Italians were putting the hit on her, so it wouldn't reflect on Seagal," Proctor told the informant, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by an FBI agent assigned to the case. (Excerpts from the document are available at The Smoking Gun Website.)

Proctor also told the informant "he had been hired to set the reporter's car on fire," but he felt "uncomfortable" doing that and balked. Instead, according to the affidavit, Proctor opted for a Godfather-esque approach, complete with dead fish, a rose, a bullet hole through the windshield and a cardboard sign scrawled with the word "stop."

Seagal's lawyer calls the whole thing hogwash coming from a slippery criminal trying to dodge jail time.

"This uncorroborated allegation by someone arrested is pure fiction and is nothing more than a transparent attempt to divert attention from himself and the real perpetrators," attorney Martin R. Pollner told the Los Angeles Times. "This is part of an unrelenting campaign to disparage Mr. Seagal and reads like a bad screenplay."

Pollner said Seagal had hired Pellicano long ago in an unrelated civil case and that the two aren't "even on speaking terms" and haven't been for quite some time.

Court documents reveal several rather dramatic "bad screenplay" claims by Proctor, who has spent time in the slammer for burglary and narcotics convictions. He says he was supposed to get $10,000 knocked off a $14,000 debt to Pellicano for the Busch attack. He says the action star and the P.I. were so pleased, his entire debt was wiped out.

The latest allegations add another layer of pulp-like drama to what initially seemed like a boring old breach-of-contract case.

The whole thing started back in March, when Seagal's former producer Nasso sued the movie tough guy for backing out of a deal to star in four films. The Hard to Kill star countered with allegations he was bullied by the Mob after cutting ties with Nasso, a purported member of the Gambino crime family.

Nasso was arrested in June on federal charges of extortion. Following his arraignment, Nasso pleaded not guilty and was released on $1.5 million bail. Soon thereafter came the Mob-like episodes involving Busch and a Vanity Fair reporter, both of whom were working on stories about the case.

For now, all of the players in this mess will play a waiting game.

Nasso is waiting for his case to be prosecuted. According to the Times, the loose-lipped Proctor faces up to 20 years in jail, if he is convicted of the charge of interfering with commerce by threats of violence. (He has pleaded not guilty.) Seagal is lamenting the bad box office of his latest action stinker, Half Past Dead, and is scheduled to head to Brooklyn next year as a witness in the trials of Nasso and several other alleged mobsters.