A member of the US Marshals Service stands outside the Manhattan Federal Court building.
Bryan R. Smith | AFP | Getty Images
A New York woman was sentenced to time already served in jail for cyberstalking in a case where she was accused of “catfishing” a mystery high-profile CEO of a publicly traded corporation.
The woman, Sakoya Blackwood, 35, was charged in a Manhattan federal court indictment with trying to extort the unidentified millionaire out of up $300,000 to keep her quiet about his sexual escapades, and about a false claim she threatened to make about him having sex with a minor.
Prosecutors have said in a court filing that in addition to that CEO, Blackwood “targeted numerous other potential victims — all wealthy and high profile men — using fictitious identities, while camouflaging her ownership of the accounts deployed in her catfishing scheme.” She was not charged in connection with those other men.
At her sentencing Wednesday, Blackwood was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release for the attempted shakedown, which spanned six months in 2022. Judge Jess Furman agreed with recommendations by her lawyers and probation officials recommended.
But because she came to the United States from Jamaica as a child without legal immigration status, Blackwood now faces the risk of being deported and separated from her 12-year-old daughter, her lawyer said in a court filing.
The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office had asked Furman to punish the Bronx resident with a “significant term of imprisonment,” which would be between 24 and 30 months given federal sentencing guidelines. An office spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Blackwood since her arrest last August had been held in a Brooklyn jail, after a judge deemed her to be a flight risk.
She pleaded guilty on March 28 to cyberstalking as part of a plea deal that led to the dismissal of the other two criminal counts she faced: extortion, and use of interstate communication with intent to extort.
Prosecutors in a court filing said Blackwood tried to extort the victim by threatening to “falsely tell the world” that the man “has sex with a minor.”
That claim was “a blatant lie which she invented out of whole cloth,” the filing noted.
But what was true were sexually explicit photos and messages the CEO shared with Blackwood as she posed in electronic communications as a former romantic partner of the victim.
Blackwood then pretended to be a vengeful ex-boyfriend and employees of media outlets — among them a Vanity Fair reporter — purportedly interested in reporting his conduct.
Such online deception is known as catfishing.
Blackwood also ramped up pressure on the victim in late April 2022 by “using Twitter to tweet veiled threats at the Victim,” prosecutors wrote.
“She tweeted about a scandal brewing around the Victim and rhetorically asked what would happen to the share price and shareholders of the Victim’s company when the compromising information is released,” the filing said.
The man’s identity has never been made public. But court filings describe him as a Harvard-educated chief executive officer of a publicly traded company who is in his late 60s.
“The defendant’s behavior was heartless,” prosecutors wrote.
“For many months, the defendant kept the Victim suffering from the constant fear that his life would be ruined. She taunted him with the prospect of releasing embarrassing materials and, even worse, false accusations that he had sex with someone who was underage,” the filing said.
Prosecutors said Blackwood “employed sophisticated and devious means” for her scheme, which included the creation of “multiple online personas” and the use of