Comedian Carrot Top was allegedly being extorted over a sex tape prior to his reported suicide attempt on Friday.
According to court documents obtained by Page Six, lawyer Ronnie Bitman claimed in a 3 September filing that musician Brian Evans had threatened to leak an X-rated video of the comedian, whose real name is Scott Thompson, if he wasn't paid.
Evans, a previous opening act for Thompson's long-running Las Vegas show, demanded "immediate payment of significant sums and states that, absent immediate payment, a sexually explicit recording of Thompson will be filed in the public court file so that it may be obtained and disseminated by the press and other parties," Bitman alleged.
The court filing included an email from Evans to Bitman in which he requested $500,000 (£373,000) "in immediately available funds" or else he'd release the video, which was on a USB drive, in a court docket. A court docket is a public record that anyone can access to see how a case is progressing.
In the email, Evans writes, "It is not a threat. I am not offering to create coverage, stop coverage, or trade silence for money. I cannot control what outlets write after a public motion is filed. The only thing that stops coverage is if we both stop filing anything."
On 14 September, 25-year-old Zachary Defazio accused Thompson of sexual exploitation in support of a federal lawsuit that Evans had previously filed against Carrot Top, Orlando Weekly reports.
In a statement to Page Six, Evans said the email was "intended to be confidential" and insisted he had "never threatened, ever, to post any video anywhere in exchange for a settlement".
Evans claimed the video "was deleted a long time ago" in accordance with a prior settlement.
"I am sorry that Scott apparently did something to hurt himself," Evans told the outlet. "He's a great talent, but these are issues he needs to deal with and move past."
