Ill. Lawyer Tells Police He Paid $40K to Extortionists Threatening to Expose Sexual Photos
An Illinois police chief is looking to prosecutors for guidance on whether to investigate a Leland Grove lawyer who says he paid more than $40,000 to a team of mother-daughter extortionists.
One of the two accused extortionists, Stephanie Leifheit-Wilson, has pleaded guilty to theft and will be sentenced on Thursday, the State Journal-Register reports. She claimed to have seen photos of the lawyer having sex with a girl who is 13 or 14 years old. The other alleged extortionist, Leifheit-Wilson’s mother, Joyce Stuebinger, is scheduled for trial on June 20.
The lawyer is not identified in the Journal-Register story. He told police he did have sex at a hotel last summer with a prostitute whom he believed to be 18 or 19, the story says. A woman in the bathroom during the encounter occasionally opened the door and may have taken pictures, he said. In a written statement in police reports, he said he did not want to jeopardize his successful law practice or his marriage.
The lawyer’s wife called police after Stuebinger and Leifheit-Wilson arrived at the lawyer’s home in a cab, according to the story. The wife answered the door but did not let the women in. The cabdriver told police that Leifheit-Wilson yelled, “I will go to the bar with the pictures and get him disbarred, you stupid [expletive].”
Police chief Mark Gleason of Leland Grove says he’s seeking direction from the State’s Attorney’s office about whether to search a camera and cell phones found in the cab. “Something happened, because he was paying this money,” Gleason told the newspaper.
