Sort of a two-part question about blackmail/extortion; if I’m wrong about the first part, I guess it kinda makes the second part moot — but, if I’m right, I don’t recall ever seeing this come up before:
Say you’re in a state where adultery isn’t a crime, and you know a guy who’s in the middle of divorce proceedings, and you have evidence that he’s committed adultery — such that, given the prenup, his spouse would go from Not Getting A Lot Of Money In The Divorce over to Getting A Lot Of Money In The Divorce.
So (a) if you go to him with this, and threaten to reveal your evidence unless he pays you a lot of money to instead hand it over to him — that could get you fined or locked up or whatever, right? You could get charged with blackmail or extortion or something, and wind up in handcuffs while the authorities explain that you’ve just committed a crime? But (b) are you breaking any laws if you instead go to his spouse and offer her the chance to hand you money in exchange for the stuff you could’ve blackmailed him with?
Put aside the specifics, if need be; maybe say two guys are up for a big promotion, and you get blackmail material on Guy A that could get you arrested if you try to extort him for X dollars — but you catch yourself in time, and instead offer it to Guy B for X dollars.
Or whatever; my question is, are you thereby committing a crime, or committing no crime?
Yeah, I guess. But while I’ve heard of private detectives — in fiction and in real life — who get hired by B to investigate A, it’s kind of a new one on me to consider a private detective who on his own initiative investigates A, and discovers stuff he could blackmail A over, and then says to B, look, you don’t know me, and you’ve maybe never suspected this about A, but I’ve got information to sell you for, oh, say, the price that I could illegally extort out of A.
I agree that it seems legal — seems obviously legal, even — and yet it strikes me as being so obviously legal while so closely paralleling the crime that I feel like I’m missing something, is all.
See, this is sort of my whole point: yeah, you’re saying that jokingly, and as a throwaway aside — but it’s literally what I’m doing, right? If I explain what I have to A, and ask for money, I’m a criminal; if I explain it to B and ask for money, then — no problem?
I realize it’s like I’m repetitively banging one piano key over and over on this, but that just seems jarringly weird and yet utterly sensible at the same time. Or, uh, simultaneously counterintuitive and completely intuitive, for me to think, gosh, mentioning this to one guy with my hand out is a business proposition from a law-abiding citizen — but doing it with the guy next to him, that’d be a stint behind bars for me!
The difference is that for a) you’re saying “if you don’t pay me i’ll ruin you”
and Guy A doesn’t have a lot of choice and gets hurt if he doesn’t pay you
whereas for b) you’re offering some info for sale - totally optional, and you’re
not hurting Guy B. Maybe totally immoral, but not illegal.
I knew a guy who hated his sister in law, who was embroiled in a bitter divorce with his brother.
She was also a doctor, and being sued for malpractice.
Now, this guy claimed that he had information to corroborate that she was taking pills recreationally.
If he had contacted her and threatened to expose her with this information, he could have gotten into trouble.
Instead, he contacted the lawyers suing her for malpractice and told them. Now, it’s true that he didn’t sell it to them, but the disclosure was perfectly fine to do.
But that’s sort of glossing over — by omitting — the eyebrow-raising part: typically, nobody raises an eyebrow when a guy simply comes forward with the sort of info that, well, yeah, could’ve been used as blackmail material, but he’s just Doing What’s Right. And nobody raises much of an eyebrow when a guy (a) notes that he’s got blackmail material, and (b) shows himself to be a boo hiss blackmailing lawbreaker when he tries to sell it.
Both are a commonplace in fiction. Both seem pretty common in reality, too.
But a scenario where a guy has blackmail material, and offers to sell it, and isn’t merely Doing What’s Right but also isn’t breaking any laws as he tries to make about the same amount of money from B that he could’ve criminally asked for from A? That just seems, I dunno, unusual, somehow.
Maybe I just don’t watch enough TV. Or know enough interesting people.
There is an exception I can think of. So called “revenge porn laws” prevent a person from posting sexual imagery that a person has received from a victim.
So, you couldn’t blackmail an ex by threatening to post your homemade porn, and you couldn’t sell it to somebody else, either.
What if it’s offered on the open market? “I am in possession of information on Person A that they would prefer to remain secret as it would have deleterious effects on their life if disclosed. Specifically, it’s information about unpleasant things Person A did to Person B. This information is legally mine, free and clear, and I am choosing to sell it. Bidding starts at X dollars.”
If Person B buys it, or a total stranger, this is perfectly legal, yes? But if Person A chooses to buy it, does that somehow magically transform the transaction into extortion? Perhaps it would depend on exactly how the seller is messaging the offer? Any sort of winky nudge to Person A encouraging them to “do the right thing for themselves” would probably cross the line, yeah?
The reason I ask is, this sounds like a close cousin of the “story spiking” that was the subject of one of Trump’s trials. Karen McDougal goes to a press outlet offering dirt on Trump. The outlet pays her. She doesn’t know the outlet has made some sort of arrangement with Trump (I don’t think it was ever clear exactly what kind of consideration was exchanged) where they agree to keep the dirt hidden. If McDougal had asked Trump to pay her directly for non-disclosure, that would be extortion. But Trump pays the outlet and the outlet pays McDougal… and it’s okay because Trump’s payment is voluntary, or indirect, or pre-arranged, or something?
It seems to me the whole scenario occupies a kind of legal gray zone where the basic facts are insufficient to make a determination, and it’s the specific conduct of the parties involved that tips things one way or another.
I’m not sure about this, because the victim of blackmailing and the other bidder would be going through different transactions. What the other person is bidding on is gaining the information. They don’t care if the blackmailer retains a copy. What the blackmailed person is bidding on is the blackmailer losing the information. They don’t care if they themselves actually get the information, so long as they can be sure that the blackmailer can’t use it any more.
Yeah I think this is an important distinction. A blackmailer is selling silence, not information. So I think selling silence is illegal, but selling information (porn excepted) is not.