Call ‘The A-Team’
Ex-lawmen help extract victims from blackmail ploys
A FORMER PROSECUTOR and a retired NYPD detective have made a successful side gig out of intervening in the tricky business of blackmail — a game they learned years ago on the job.
Attorney Jeremy Saland and private investigator Herman Weisberg serve desperate men and women, tasked with getting them out of extortion bids in sordid scenarios that threaten their livelihoods and families.
Their clients have included a married Brooklyn father in the financial sector whose cocaine-fueled affair with a transgender Backpage prostitute derailed his white picket fence facade of a life.
The call girl — who shook the man down for hush money — backed down when confronted with the illegality of her exploits, the duo recalled.
“I don’t care what you did or what you didn’t do at all. I don’t care what the situation is with your wife, or if it’s a business context I don’t care what’s going on with your business,” Saland said he tells clients. “My job is to protect you, whether I like you or not.”
There was also a rising-star model whose success caused her jealous-crazed ex-boyfriend to incite a campaign that threatened to ruin her by exposing an intimate secret.
Yet another customer met a 17-year-old girl on Seekingarrangments.com, a “sugar daddy” hookup site. She had claimed to be four years older. They went to a club, got drunk and the young lady left with a collection of selfies with her new gentleman friend. Nothing sexual had transpired between the two — but she threatened to share the photos with his wife if he did not fork over $2,000.
Complications mounted when Saland and Weisberg learned the girl was the daughter of an NYPD cop — but they negotiated an end to the conduct with the troubled teen’s concerned parent.
Saland and Weisberg — who were paired up at the Manhattan DA’s office in 2004 to handle the prosecution of four men charged with trying to shake down hoops star Carmelo Anthony for $3 million — said most of their targets back off once they realize the gravity of their criminal conduct.
Their targets get schooled in the law — not threatened — with strongly worded ceaseand-desist letters and face-to-face visits from Weisberg.
The tactics they use are nothing new to them.
“We’re wearing the exact same hats as we MORE THAN 200 New Yorkers took to the streets Saturday to protest the acquittal of the Minnesota cop who fatally shot Philando Castile. The protesters marched through Harlem calling for justice and clutching signs with messages that included “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere — MLK.” “I’m out here like I always come out here because justice has not been served,” said Jabari Brisport, 29. “And we can’t let it slide every time a murderer, even one sanctioned by the government, commits a crime.” The 32-year-old Castile, an African-American cafeteria worker, was shot and killed during a July 2016 traffic stop in St. Paul. Officer Jeronimo Yanez opened fire after the motorist, a licensed gun owner, said he was carrying a firearm and reached toward his pocket or seatbelt. Castile’s girlfriend livestreamed the dying man’s final moments on Facebook — a shooting that sparked outrage across the country. did as prosecutor and detective doing controlled calls, wiring people up, videotaping meetings and in the end, we’re preserving the evidence so that we’re coming from the strongest place possible to either stop this person from continuing the blackmail or we’ll turn over those materials to the district attorney’s office,” Saland said.
Clients, Saland said, get the benefit of knowing their secrets are safe.
“If they come to us, there is no chance from our end that they will be exposed,” the lawyer said. “Whereas if it goes to the channel of the NYPD, there’s a real risk — especially if the person has some form of celebrity or has money — that it would be potentially leaked, either to the press or some other third party.”
In the case of the model, Weisberg recalled the ex-boyfriend was defensive at first. When approached at his Brooklyn apartment that reeked of pot, however, he quickly gave in.
“At 11:30 a.m., marijuana smoke was wafting out of the door,” Weisberg said. “I explained to him that what he was doing was a crime.” Then reality set in. “He apologized profusely and said it wouldn’t happen again,” Weisberg said. “He was very concerned about the repercussions.”