Apparently a smooth run at the Miss America crown involves never having your photo taken. Ever.

Reigning Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo told reporters Thursday that someone has threatened to go public with years-old, not salacious pictures of her if she doesn't give up her crown.

"Being crowned as Miss New Jersey is a dream come true," Polumbo said at a news conference at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, per the New Jersey Star-Ledger. "But that dream has now turned into a nightmare. I am presently the victim of blackmail and possible extortion."

And while "it would certainly be easier for me to simply succumb to these unlawful and immoral threats, and quietly disappear," she won't take this affront lying down, the 22-year-old Wagner College senior said.

Polumbo said that she received copies of between six and a dozen photos—which she and her attorney would only describe as not revealing—in the mail on June 25, accompanied by a letter threatening to publish them unless she relinquished her crown to first runner-up Ronica Licciardello—by today.

Attorney Anthony R. Caruso said that he has been in touch with state and federal authorities to try to identify the source of the threats, adding that he believes they have come from "someone close to Amy."

Someone close to Amy who's a big fan of Licciardello, apparently.

"We hope to have much more information as to the sources of this threat in the very near future," Caruso said. "Until then, we are refraining from further comment as to the specifics of the photos or the letters."

However, he did say: "I don't think the photos are that bad. The people posting this blackmail scheme are trying to make these photos out to be worse than I think they are."

Caruso went on to say Friday that it wasn't the photos per se, but the captions, that are troubling his client.

"They're just disgusting captions," he said. "They're clearly meant to have one view these photos in an entirely different light." Caruso says that he has contacted the state attorney general's office to discuss whether the statements added to the pics are defamatory.

According to Polumbo, the pictures are of her and some friends and may have been ones that she posted years ago on a private Website.

Polumbo's aunt, Cathy Capper, reiterated that the snapshots in question are not at all revealing and that her niece showed more skin during the Miss New Jersey swimsuit competition.

As for whether Polumbo will get the Katie Rees treatment if those pics turn out to be a little more compromising than the beauty queen's camp has indicated, Miss New Jersey organization spokesman Mark Soifer told the Star-Ledger that the board has also received copies of the photographs and is reviewing the matter.

"We just got the material," Soifer said. "We're hoping the best for her. The board has to review it and make a decision."

It's been a rough year for the Jersey girls. Miss New Jersey USA Ashley Harder stepped down in January after announcing she was pregnant and was replaced by Erin Abrahamson. (Miss New Jersey is part of the Miss America Organization. Miss New Jersey USA is an affiliate of Donald Trump's Miss Universe Organization, which puts on the Miss USA pageant.)

Actually, it's been a strange year in the land of pageantry as a whole.

In addition to Harder's decision to step down, Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees was stripped of her title in December after racy photos of her taken on vacation in Florida, several years before she was crowned, made the Internet rounds.

Rees' troubles, of course, surfaced as Miss USA Tara Conner was fighting to keep her crown after being called out for her excessive underage-partying ways and ending up in rehab. At the same time, MADD dropped Miss Teen USA Katie Blair as a spokeswoman after she was spotted living it up with Conner in a series of New York bars.

Not that crown-related controversy is a new phenomenon, though. In 2002, Miss North Carolina Rebekah Revels stepped down after an ex-boyfriend threatened to publicize topless pictures of her, and, in 1984, Vanessa L. Williams was forced to give up her Miss America crown after Penthouse published two-year-old nude photos of her, taken when she was working as a photographer's assistant.

(Originally published July 5, 2007 at 7:06 p.m. PT)