Kevin Hart sex tape scandal: Man accused of extorting comedian hit with criminal charges
Kevin Hart's marriage to Eniko Parrish came under the scanner last year when an explosive video tap surfaced around September, allegedly showing the comedian getting intimate with a woman who was not his wife. At the time, the 38-year-old Hollywood star had come clean about the incident and even posted an apology video on social media.
The sex tape scandal, however, has once again come back to attention with the recent arrest of a man in Los Angeles, who is believed to have used the video to extort the comedian-cum-actor for financial gains.
On Wednesday, multiple websites reported that the alleged blackmailer, Jonathan Todd Jackson, who faces criminal charges on accounts of attempted extortion and extortion by threatening letter, is set to be arraigned. Better known as Action Jackson in the celeb circles, the accused, as per TMZ, is a long-time friend of Hart's and has even appeared with the actor in the movie 'Think Like a Man Too'.
While we haven't independently verified this latest bit of information, Hart's recent cryptic tweet in the light of the arrest only adds to the doubts. "Mind blown...Hurt...at a lost for words and simply in complete disbelief at the moment. WOW," the actor shared via Twitter.
As it turns out, Jackson seems to have tried to extort money from the Jumanji actor sometime between Aug 25 and Aug 30 in 2017. After using the allegedly obscene clip to blackmail Hart, the accused is also said to have shopped around the video to multiple celebrity news sites.
When all of this actually went down in late 2017, Hart had openly alluded to the fact that he was being extorted over the video.
“I’m not going to allow a person to have financial gain off of my mistakes and in this particular situation, that’s what was attempted,” the father-of-three said in his social media post. “I said, ‘I’d rather fess up to my mistakes.’”
At the time, Hart had even used his message to apologize to his wife, with whom he shares a baby, Kenzo Kash Hart.