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OPRAH ALL OVER THE NEWS: TV host victim of blackmail attempt; woman sues after fall at Harpo; 2005 donations revealed; mogul takes AIDS test with students.
*Oprah Winfrey could publish a thick issue of “O” magazine based solely on her involvement in news events over the past weekend – excluding her fulfilled dream of opening a school for girls in South Africa.
One of the most personally-gratifying weeks of her career ended up with news of a 36-year-old Georgia man being charged with tying to blackmail her for $1.5 million, and a woman suing her Harpo Studios claiming she was pushed down as people clamored for good seats during a taping.
Today, Keifer Bonvillain of Atlanta is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Chicago on charges that he threatened Winfrey with the release of recorded telephone conversations he claimed would hurt her reputation, according to the FBI and published reports.
The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court named Bonvillain’s target as “a public figure and the owner of a Chicago-based company." The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, citing unnamed sources, reported Saturday that Bonvillain's target was Winfrey.
He is currently out on $20,000 bail following his arrest on Dec. 15 in the parking lot of an Atlanta hotel.
The alleged blackmailing has roots in a first-time encounter between Bonvillain and a California-based employee of the “Chicago company” at a party more than two years ago. According to the complaint, Bonvillain recorded conversations with the employee about the owner and her business, then sent the owner an e-mail claiming to have tapes of the employee bad-mouthing her.
A month later, Bonvillain followed up with a letter explaining that he had tapes of the conversations, according to the complaint. In response, another associate of the Chicago company called Bonvillain and learned he had taped 12 hours of those discussions.
In the following weeks, Bonvillain told the associate that he was fielding offers of $500,000 to $3 million from tabloids and book publishers to write a book based on the tapes.
"There are a lot of people who would want these," Bonvillain said, according to the complaint.
The associate, who was in cahoots with the FBI, agreed to pay Bonvillain $1.5 million, and wired Bonvillain $3,000 in earnest money. They arranged to meet in the parking lot, the complaint said. Bonvillain was arrested the following day.
Bonvillain told the Sun-Times the charges were a misunderstanding.
"There is nothing to it," he said. "It's nothing. It was a big mix-up."
Meanwhile, Tayna Milner filed a lawsuit against Harpo Thursday in Cook County Circuit Court for failing to properly control its crowd, which she says caused her to be pushed down the stairs between a waiting area and audience seating in a mad rush for seats during an April 11th taping.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Milner suffered unspecified injuries and is seeking more than $50,000 in damages.
In other Oprah news, GuideStar.org and federal tax filings have revealed just how much money is being donated from Winfrey’s three charities - The Oprah Winfrey Foundation, Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network and The Oprah Winfrey Operating Foundation.
The Angel Network, mostly a means for fans to help raise money for worthy causes, distributed more than $4 million to 40 organizations in 2005, the majority of which related to Africa, reports Fox411’s Roger Friedman. They also sent $2 million to disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami. The Angel Network claimed $15 million in net assets in 2004-2005.
Oprah’s Operating Foundation has $19 million in assets and will go toward its sole beneficiary, her recently opened Leadership Academy in South Africa.
The Oprah Winfrey Foundation, according to its most recent filing, has total assets of $172 million. Just last year, Winfrey donated $36 million of her own money to the Foundation, which in turn distributed $8 million to numerous educational, arts and medical groups.
Historically Black Colleges Jackson State University in Mississippi and Morehouse College in Atlanta are among her largest recipients, reports Friedman. But she also has contributed a significant amount of cash to the exclusive Miss Porter’s, a finishing school in Farmington, Conn. where she sent her nieces in the early '90s, Friedman reports.
He continues: “When you compare her charitable activity to Donald Trump, of which I wrote about last week ($750,000 a year), or to the empty promises of ‘charity singles’ that come from Michael Jackson, Winfrey’s work is unparalleled and unprecedented. She’s put about $5 million into a Boys and Girls club in her Mississippi hometown, for example, and last year another $500,000 went to the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation.”
*In still more Oprah news, she joined the students of her newly-opened South African school in taking an AIDS test to promote HIV awareness in the country, where the epidemic infects one out of nine people and kills nearly 1,000 per day.
"To be a great leader you must be of sound mind, body and spirit. Part of leadership is having the courage to demonstrate true action. Today I have taken the test to demonstrate why it's so important," Winfrey said.
Winfrey also promised to provide free anti-retroviral treatment to all parents and relatives living in the students' homes.
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