Nobody gets the best of Oprah.
Federal officials have struck a deal with the Atlanta man accused of attempting to extort $1.5 million from Oprah Winfrey stemming from a criminal complaint filed earlier this year.
The U.S. attorney in Chicago has entered into a pretrial-diversion agreement with 36-year-old Keifer Bonvillain where the charges will be dropped if he manages to complete a yearlong program of restitution without any further transgressions.
In addition to completing 50 hours of community service, Bonvillain must also undergo drug testing, attend either school or work regularly and pay $3,000 to the FBI for the cost of its investigation.
Most importantly, however, the tapes he was trying to use to blackmail Winfrey, on which an unidentified former Harpo underling reportedly bad-mouths the working conditions, must not be leaked.
"His successful completion of the program will result in no further prosecution in connection with this matter," U.S. Attorney's Office spokesperson Randall Samborn said.
The case dates back two years, when Bonvillain purportedly met and befriended an unidentified California-based Winfrey employee at a party. Over subsequent weeks, Bonvillain allegedly recorded more than 12 hours of phone conversations with said employee making potentially reputation-damaging comments about the talk-show queen. The tapes were never played in open court and remain under a court-ordered seal.
Last October, Bonvillain went so far as to email Winfrey herself, informing her of the recordings' existence and the "awful things" they contained, and requested $1.5 million to keep them quiet. In November, he sent a similar letter to Harpo Studios, saying the tapes would "not destroy but hurt" the media queen's magnanimous rep.
Bonvillain threatened to write a book detailing the contents of the audio recordings or simply sell the audio recordings to the highest bidding tabloid.
Winfrey's reps went to the FBI with the extortion letter and then secretly began working together, wiring Bonvillain $3,000 last December with promises to pay the balance in person in exchange for the tapes in an Atlanta parking lot. When Bonvillain appeared, he was arrested and extradited to Chicago, where he was formally charged.
For his part, he called the whole incident a "misunderstanding."
The disgruntled Harpo employee, meanwhile, did fess up to dissing Winfrey, though claimed to be unaware that the conversations were taped. No charges were filed against that person.
Neither Winfrey nor Harpo have commented on the brouhaha, and in fact court documents have never officially listed the talk host in legal papers, instead referring simply to "a public figure and the owner of a Chicago-based company."
"We believe it's in the interest of justice," Samborn said. "Beyond that, we decline additional comment about our prosecutorial decision-making."