Seeking Distraction: Gossip and Extortion

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Gossip and Extortion

The Cost of Keeping his Secret

To most people it was startling news. For roughly four years, Mr. Sheen had worked to keep his status private, out of public view, by jousting with the media and paying several people, in what he called “shakedowns,” for their silence.

Mr. Sheen’s side used legal threats, nondisclosure agreements that visitors to his home had to sign, and money to keep those who knew from disclosing his medical condition.

“I’ve paid those people,” Mr. Sheen said at one point in the “Today” interview, “enough to bring it into the millions.”

Seeing photographs of Mr. Sheen’s antiretroviral medicines that had been taken by a woman after she’d had sex with Mr. Sheen and had been provided to the blogger who revealed Mr. Sheen’s status in several online posts. It reported not only that Mr. Sheen had H.I.V. but that he was paying a 25-year-old woman to keep his secret.

During his “Today” appearance, Mr. Sheen confirmed that one of the people he was paying was someone who had taken pictures of his medicines with a cellphone.

The first account appeared in April 2014, about three years after Mr. Sheen said he received the diagnosis and 19 months before he sat down with Mr. Lauer to disclose his medical condition.

The posts about Sheen's condition were removed. Mr. Sheen's lawyer thanked the blogger's lawyer for redacting the offending content, and spoke of four payments of $15,000 being made as a result.

The National Enquirer was also pursuing the story. Dylan Howard, the top editor at that tabloid, said the paper began looking into rumors that Mr. Sheen was ill in the fall of 2013 and its curiosity was piqued when Mr. Jasper’s blog posts came down.

“There is a pitched battle for exclusives in this market,” Mr. Howard said. “Losing a bombshell to a competitor stings at the very core.”