AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron Reveals He Was Targeted In Blackmail Plot In 2022

Dade Hayes
·2 min read
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Adam Aron, the colorful and outspoken CEO of top exhibitor AMC Entertainment, revealed Thursday in a post on X/Twitter that he had been targeted in a blackmail plot last year.

The exec described it as “entirely a personal matter” and one that is “now closed.” He said he had reported the extortion attempt to AMC’s board as well as law enforcement. The perpetrator, whom he did not know, who was arrested and then sentenced in July.

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AMC’s board “thoroughly reviewed these events” with outside counsel at the WilmerHale law firm, Aron wrote. In a statement provided to Deadline, AMC’s board said it “retained independent counsel, WilmerHale, to look into the incident. The board determined it was a personal matter, and considers the issue resolved.”

Aron’s revelation came just after news outlet Semafor published an article about him being enmeshed in what it called a “catfishing scam.” The CEO “sent sexually explicit images and messages in a weeks-long text exchange with a woman who tried to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from him using fake identities,” according to the report. The woman, Sakoya Blackwood of the Bronx, NY, was sentenced in July to time already served.

While he upholds the conventional corporate function of a CEO, Aron has also become a larger-than-life figure in corporate America and is in many ways the personification of AMC. After individual investors nicknamed themselves “apes” and made AMC one of the meme-stock phenomena of the Covid era, Aron was anointed as The Silverback. Known to quote Churchill on marathon earnings calls, he has pushed the company into unlikely business areas like silver mining and packaged popcorn.

Along the way, he has helped the company escape close brushes with bankruptcy as the movie theater business has come under increasing pressure.

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