MARQUETTE, Mich. - A woman charged with conspiring to bilk actor John Stamos of hundreds of thousands of dollars had a brief romantic fling with him when she was a 17-year-old high school student during a spring break trip to Florida in 2004, an attorney said Monday.Defence lawyer Sarah Henderson made the allegation during opening arguments in the U.S. District Court trial of Allison Coss and Scott Sippola. Stamos, who attended the trial's opening day, declined comment.
Coss, 24, and Sippola, 31, both of Marquette, are accused of conspiring to extort $680,000 from Stamos by telling him they had photos of him with cocaine and strippers. Prosecutors contend the pictures don't exist, and FBI agents testified Monday they found no such photos while searching the defendants' house after their arrest.
Henderson and Assistant U.S. Attorney Maarten Vermaat agreed in their opening statements that Coss and Stamos met in Orlando, Fla., in 2004 — shortly after Stamos had separated from his wife, actress and supermodel Rebecca Romijn. The couple divorced the next year.
Henderson said Stamos, now 46, noticed Coss and another girl at a club, asked friends to bring them over and later invited the star-struck teens to his hotel room. Stamos ordered a drink for Coss even after she told him she was 17, Henderson said.
Two women who worked as strippers eventually showed up in the room with a bag of cocaine, she said, and Coss and her friend took a picture of Stamos bending over a table where the drugs had been laid out.
Henderson said Stamos and Coss later kissed on a bed and got into a hot tub together after Stamos undressed and Coss stripped to her underwear. She said Stamos offered to perform oral sex on Coss, but she declined. Florida law makes it a second-degree felony for someone 24 or older to have oral sex with anyone 16 or 17 years old. It carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
Stamos eventually became frustrated, broke a bedpost with his hand and left the room before apologizing and inviting Coss to spend the night, which she did, Henderson said.
For the next few years, they maintained a "flirty kind of relationship" by email, Henderson said.
Vermaat also said the two exchanged emails "with some regularity" but did not discuss details of the alleged 2004 encounter.
Stamos received two emails last fall from a "Jessica T" who claimed she was pregnant and Stamos was the father, Vermaat said. Later came a series of emails from a "Brian L" describing allegedly compromising photos and saying they would be sold to tabloids if Stamos did not buy them for $680,000.
Prosecutors contend Coss and Sippola sent the emails.
Stamos contacted the FBI, Vermaat said. During testimony, two agents described a sting operation that ended with Coss and Sippola's arrest at K.I. Sawyer International Airport near Marquette, where an agent posing as a Stamos representative had promised to leave a bag of cash.
"This is really just a get-rich-quick scheme that is based on lies and betrayal," Vermaat told the jury of eight men and four women.
Defence attorneys acknowledged their clients tried to sell photos to Stamos but insisted they had a right to do so and considered it a legitimate business transaction, not a crime.
"Human beings make mistakes," Henderson said. "Not all mistakes are illegal."
Oh please! That has to be the lamest defense I have ever heard. It was blackmail pure and simple. And Mr. Stamos, you are no innocent in this mess. Stay away from teenagers. You should know better than to have sex with a seventeen year old and expose her to drugs. You are in your forties; grow up and show some responsibility. You should be setting a better example than that. And if the allegations are true, you should be in jail too.
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