Atlantan charged with attempt to blackmail Oprah

An Atlanta man is accused of trying to extort $1.5 million from Oprah Winfrey by threatening to go public with tapes of telephone conversations between him and a Winfrey employee during which he claimed the employee said "awful things" that could embarrass the Chicago-based talk show host.

The alleged extortion plot is laid out in a federal complaint describing how a business representative of Winfrey served as an intermediary after notifying the FBI and allowing agents to monitor conversations between the representative and Keifer Bonvillain, 36, of Atlanta.

Winfrey is not identified by name in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, but rather as "Individual A ... a public figure and the owner of a Chicago-based Company."

The Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune on Saturday both identified Individual A as Winfrey, citing unidentified sources close to the investigation. Harpo Studios is based in Chicago.

According to court documents, Bonvillain was arrested by FBI agents Dec. 15 at the Marriott Atlanta Airport Hotel, where he was supposed to hand over the tapes to the Winfrey representative in exchange for $1.5 million.

Atlanta FBI special agent Stephen Emmett declined to comment on the case Saturday and referred questions to the U.S. Attorney's office in Atlanta, which had no comment. A spokesman for the Chicago FBI office, special agent Ross Rice, also declined to comment.

Bonvillain, who was released on $20,000 bond, is scheduled for a court hearing at 9 a.m. Monday in Chicago. His Atlanta phone number is unlisted. No one answered the door at his Atlanta apartment Saturday afternoon. His Chicago attorney, Kent R. Carlson, did not return a call seeking comment.

Bonvillain told the Sun-Times the charges were a misunderstanding: "There is nothing to it," he is quoted as saying. "It's nothing. It was a big mix-up."

Winfrey, who was in South Africa for the opening of a $40 million girls' school that she paid for, and her press representatives could not be reached for comment.

The complaint describes how Bonvillain met an California-based employee of the Chicago company, neither of which are identified, about 2 1/2 years ago at a party in Atlanta.

Then, three or four months ago, according to the complaint, Bonvillain began calling the employee and asking the employee about the company and Individual A. Bonvillain recorded those conversations, the document said.

In October, according to the complaint, Bonvillain contacted Individual A by e-mail, claiming the employee he had been talking to was saying "awful things" about Individual A.

In November, according to the complaint, Bonvillain wrote a letter to Individual A's company stating that he had tapes of conversations that "will be embarrassing to Individual A."

The contents of the tapes are not revealed in the complaint.

At that point, Individual A's business representative called Bonvillain, and Bonvillain told the representative he had 12 hours of recorded conversations, and he planned to write a book about Individual A.

A few days later, Bonvillain sent the representative an audiotape excerpt of the conversations, notes from those conversations and a list of questions he wanted answered, the complaint said.

A company attorney then contacted Bonvillain and told him the conversations had been taped illegally.

About a week and a half later, Bonvillain sent a letter telling the representative he would "hold off making any final decision about my book and speaking to the media in an effort to give you a fair opportunity to respond" to the allegations, according to the complaint.

He said he had been offered a publishing contract and had hired an attorney to help handle the deal.

About a week later, according to the complaint, Bonvillain's attorney --- who is not named in the complaint --- told the representative "his client is a desperate man and that he has been offered a lot of money," and, "if [the representative] wanted this to go away, he [the representative] would have to be prepared to put an offer on the table."

After that conversation, the representative notified the FBI, which began monitoring phone calls between the representative and Bonvillain over the next two weeks as the two tried to negotiate a deal.

At one point, Bonvillain said the tapes would "not destroy but hurt" Individual A's reputation.

Bonvillain told the representative the contents of the tapes were "shocking" and "newsworthy" and that he had discussed with his publisher the possibility of a $500,000 to $3 million advance.

Eventually, according to the complaint, Bonvillain agreed to sell the tapes to the representative for $1.5 million.

When he showed up in the parking lot of the Marriott Atlanta Airport Hotel at 9 a.m. on Dec. 15, he was met by FBI agents, who arrested him without incident.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution