Harvey Weinstein Cast as Victim in a Failed Actor's Extortion Plot
With a résumé littered with no-name or uncredited parts, failed actor Vivek Shah has finally become famous now that he'll be known as the the guy who tried to extort millions from Harvey Weinstein in an elaborate, kind of scary plot. Shah, as The New York Post's Emily Smith, Cynthia R. Fagen, and Bruce Golding report, tried to extort millions from the film mogul and Obama fundraiser, as well as "at least four other tycoons" by sending each of them letters threatening to kill their family members unless they transfer millions of dollars to an offshore bank account in Cyprus. "Shah is currently being held without bail and is in transit to West Virginia, where one of his alleged targets has a home and where he was indicted yesterday," according to The Post.
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The Smoking Gun has the full affidavit (it calls Weinstein "a Connecticut resident and co-founder of a film studio). From The Post's hyperbolic treatment ("H'WOOD SLAY PLOT" screams the paper's frontpage) and what the actual story is right now (a failed extortion plot), it's hard to judge just how serious Shah was. But, as Daily Intel's Joe Coscarelli points out, there's "the fact that when Shah was collared, he was just days away from attending a scheduled handgun training session in L.A." And Shah's father, Mahesh, added one more extortion twist this already bizarre plot, as reported by The Post: "He was pressured by someone, and they threatened they would kill Vivek."
