While Oprah Winfrey's been out saving the world, the FBI has been out saving Oprah Winfrey.
An Atlanta man has been charged with attempted extortion of the talk show host, allegedly threatening to release damaging recordings of phone conversations he had with one of Winfrey's employees unless she forked over $1.5 million.
Keifer Bonvillain, 36, was arrested Dec. 15 and has since been formally charged in Chicago federal court. News of the plot and arrest surfaced over the weekend.
According to the criminal complaint, Bonvillain was corralled the day after one of Winfrey's representatives, who was secretly working with the FBI, wired him $3,000 and agreed to meet with him in an Atlanta hotel parking lot to pay the balance in exchange for the tapes.
Despite the feds having recorded conversations between Bonvillain and Winfrey's rep in which he agreed to hand over the recordings, he nevertheless told the Chicago Sun-Times it was all a big misunderstanding.
"There is nothing to it," he said. "It's nothing. It's a big mix-up."
The "mix-up" dates back to last fall, when, according to the criminal complaint, Bonvillain befriended the unidentified Winfrey employee at a party. Over subsequent weeks, Bonvillain reportedly—and illegally—bugged 12 hours of phone conversations with the "business associate," which supposedly including damaging information.
It's unknown what allegations were on the tapes, though on Oct. 17, Bonvillain reportedly sent an email to Winfrey herself, informing her of the recordings, which he claimed had "awful things" on them, and requesting the $1.5 million payoff.
In November, per court documents, he sent a similar letter to Winfrey's Harpo Studios, claiming the information found on the tapes would "not destroy but hurt" the beloved star's reputation.
According to the complaint, in one of the FBI-sanctioned recordings between Winfrey's rep and Bonvillain, who is currently back in his Atlanta home after being freed on $20,000 bail in December, the man threatened to alternately write a book containing the allegations or simply sell them to the tabloids, saying "my tapes are worth money."
As for the unnamed employee, according to a sworn affidavit, the person copped to taking part in the phone conversations, though claimed to be unaware the chats were being recorded.
"At no time during any of these telephone conversations did I give Mr. Bonvillain permission to tape-record our discussions; neither did Mr. Bonvillain inform me that he was recording our conversations," the employee said in the court statement.
Winfrey typically demands that prospective employees sign strict confidentiality agreements before their hiring, prohibiting them from talking—in good or bad terms—about their boss.
While the criminal complaint against Bonvillain was lodged last month, the victim of the attempted extortion has been listed in court documents simply as "Individual A," "a public figure and the owner of a Chicago-based company." It was only this week that both Chicago papers confirmed it was Winfrey.
Bonvillain's attorney, Kent Carlson, said he couldn't "confirm or deny" any details in the complaint.
Bonvillain returned to Chicago court Monday and waived his right to a preliminary hearing with a federal magistrate. The case will likely be heard before a grand jury to determine whether or not there's enough evidence to begin a trial.
Winfrey, meanwhile, is keeping busy in South Africa. Last week, the mogul opened the $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls and over the weekend took an HIV test at the facility to increase AIDS awareness in the region.