Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony arrive at an awards dinner, June 6, 2006, in the Century City section of Los Angeles. A New Jersey man who was arrested after he and an accomplice tried to sell the couple's stolen wedding video back to them for $1 million pleaded guilty Thursday, June 29, 2006, in New York to attempted grand larceny.
The other mastermind behind the great J.Lo wedding video caper has owned up to his crime.
Steven Wortman, 49, pleaded guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor count of attempted grand larceny for his role in a scheme to sell a stolen video of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's June 2004 nuptials back to the couple for the bargain price of $1 million.
Wortman, who was also facing charges for conspiracy and possessing stolen property, received three years' probation in exchange for his plea.
The purloined video was in a laptop computer that disappeared along with Anthony's Cadillac Escalade while it was parked on a New Jersey street in October 2005.
Authorities recovered the stolen car, but the computer stayed missing until Wortman and his partner in crime, 31-year-old Tito Moses, rang up Anthony's production company to discuss a selling price for the laptop. An undercover detective intercepted the call and eventually negotiated Moses and Wortman's original million-dollar asking price down to $250,000 before arranging a meeting with them at a diner. When the would-be extortionists showed up for the tradeoff, police arrested them on the spot.
Moses pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted grand larceny on June 14 in exchange for a guarantee that he'd only serve between 18 months and three years in prison. Wortman, who, according to prosecutors, threatened to destroy the wedding video when the Lopez-Anthony camp refused to pony up $ 1 million, originally entered a not guilty plea but apparently decided he had best get with the program.
When New York Justice Bonnie Wittner asked Wortman whether he and Moses made phone calls demanding money from Lopez and Anthony between Dec. 20 and 27 last year "in exchange for not releasing [the video] to the general public," Wortman replied: "Sorrowfully, yes."
He is scheduled to report to probation officials on Aug. 4.
Wittner has held off on sentencing Moses, saying that she'll wait until he is sentenced in a related case pertaining to Anthony's stolen SUV and that he will be allowed to serve the two sentences concurrently.
While Lopez was able to stay well enough away from these NYC-based criminal proceedings, a civil matter moving forward in Los Angeles has been keeping her busy instead.
A hearing is set for Friday regarding a preliminary injunction the singer-actress is seeking against a Lopez expose that her first husband, Ojani Noa, is supposedly planning to write.
According to J.Lo's petition to keep the book out of sight, Noa wanted $5 million to keep his pen capped and, since she refused to fork over any money, he's now prepared to dish up some pretty explicit details about their relationship and her past exploits (as he remembers them, of course).
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