As outlined by Associated Press reports, former model Karen Sypher, 50, and Louisville University men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino, 57, are near the end of their year-long legal battle. Karen Sypher has been pronounced guilty on three counts of extortion, two counts of misleading the FBI and a single count of witness retaliation. The catalyst for the charges was Sypher’s series of attempts to extort millions in hush money from Pitino after a 2003 sexual encounter. Sypher had also claimed that Pitino raped her, but he denied her claim and avoided charge. Sypher faces a maximum sentence of 26 years in prison, but federal guidelines will likely decrease the penalty.
Pitino was harassed by calls and letters
According to reports, Rick Pitino received multiple phone calls and two letters. Demands for money and gifts were made in exchange for Karen Sypher’s silence. ”This was nothing more than a pure shakedown of Richard Pitino,” attorney Marisa Ford told jurors in the case. Attorney Marisa Ford said that “This was nothing more than a pure shakedown of Richard Pitino”. Sypher’s defense maintained that she was being unfairly demonized and that Pitino was receiving preferential treatment due to his fame.
Pitino and also the ‘unfortunate’ quarter-minute
In a emotionally charged six hours of testimony, Pitino described his late-night encounter with Sypher in a closed and deserted Italian restaurant. Pitino described his 15-second tryst with Sypher as “unfortunate” and consensual. Pitino held back tears when he described what it was like to confess his betrayal to his wife and family.
Sypher did not take the stand
Though Karen Sypher didn’t give testimony, a video interview was aired for the jury. The Pitino rape allegation came from that footage. She also corroborated Pitino’s story that he had later paid her future husband Tim Sypher – a one-time Pitino assistant – $ 3,000. Mr. Sypher delivered the cash to Karen Sypher (then Karen Wise), and the two eventually married. In the ensuing years, the couple bumped into Pitino numerous times at area functions. Karen Sypher insists the $ 3,000 was for an abortion, but Pitino has vehemently denied this was the case.
A man on Pitino’s line in ‘09
The AP indicates that Pitino’s testimony integrated talk of other menacing telephone calls he’s received beginning in February 2009. An unknown male threatened him in much the very same fashion he’d been threatened by Karen Sypher’s previous extortion tries. Rick Pitino recounted that “He mentioned the word rape. I got very sick to my stomach”. Yet in spite of this, he did not report the calls of the initial event with Karen Sypher to the police, because he wanted to contain the damaging information first.
Find more information on this subject
Associated Press
nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/38574025/ns/sports-college_basketball/
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