SUMNER ‘MOB’ PLOY
Ex files rackets suit over mogul’s millions
The former girlfriend of ailing media titan Sumner Redstone has found a new way to battle his daughter over the billionaire’s fortune — the anti-mob RICO laws.
Manuela Herzer filed a $100 million racketeering lawsuit against Shari Redstone and her son, attorney and rabbi, Tyler Korff, in California federal court on Monday.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was passed in 1970 to help prosecutors fight organized crime.
But the statute also lets ordinary citizens seek triple damages through civil suits over fraud and other alleged “racketeering activity.”
Herzer’s RICO suit accuses Shari Redstone and Korff of such acts as eavesdropping on her confidential conversations, bribing domestic help to spy on her, and copying her financial documents.
Herzer claims she discovered new evidence of the “illegal infiltration” of her private affairs from other suits she has brought against Shari Redstone and her associates.
“For two years, they concealed this e-mail and text record in response to documents requests and subpoenas served in earlier litigation,” Herzer says in court papers.
The RICO claim comes a year and a half after a California judge determined that Redstone was not mentally fit to make his own decisions.
Herzer says Redstone, now 94, is in bad shape.
She says he “cannot speak, write, read or take care of himself.”
She also claims Shari Redstone was estranged from her father and pushed her, Herzer, out of his Beverly Hills home “to take over [his] life and to then use that dominion to take over CBS and Viacom.”
The suit accuses the mother-son duo of paying one of Sumner Redstone’s nurses, Giovanni Paz, $10,000 to spy on her.
It further claims they bribed seven domestic helpers, including Sumner Redstone’s personal secretary at Viacom, Gloria Mazzeo, and his full-time driver, Isileli Tuanaki.
Another nurse, Jeremy Jagiello, forwarded photographs of Herzer’s wire transfers to Shari Redstone, according to the suit.
The legal papers also claiim that Shari Redstone has changed her father’s estate plan to make herself the “sole controlling shareholder of both Viacom and CBS.”
An attorney for the mother and son said, “Shari unequivocally rejects the fantastical allegations dreamt up by the latest in Ms. Herzer’s revolving door of lawyers.”