Adam Aron, the controversial CEO of meme-stock darling AMC Entertainment, sent sexually explicit images and text messages to a woman he thought was a ballerina who had done “unmentionable things” to him, according to a bombshell report.
Instead, the woman turned out to be a 34-year-old Bronx con artist who catfished and attempted to extort the married executive, Aron admitted Thursday after the news site Semafor reported the sordid tale.
The scam surfaced in a sealed federal indictment filed in the Southern District of New York last year against Sakoya Blackwood, who pleaded guilty over the summer, the outlet reported.
Aron — who was identified as “Victim 1” and described as a “public-company CEO” in the sealed indictment — sent a woman by the name of “Mia” raunchy photos that included him and another woman, sources familiar with the matter told Semafor.
Blackwood had reportedly messaged Aron in March 2022 claiming to be a 17-year-old Russian model.
Throughout their steamy exchange, the 69-year-old Aron — who has been married since 1987 — mistook Blackwood’s fake identity as a woman with whom he’d had a prior relationship, according to Semafor.
He asked her whether she was a ballerina who had done “unmentionable things” to him, according to sealed court documents obtained by Semafor.
Blackwood went on to fabricate a cast of characters — including a fake ex-boyfriend and a made-up Vanity Fair reporter claiming to have seen the messages — who also reached out to Aron through online burner accounts.
Through these fictitious aliases, Blackwood demanded six figures in hush money and threatened to screenshot her messages with Aron and share them with the press and AMC’s board, Semafor reported.
“Offers are coming in like crazy ppl love a scandal,” she texted Aron under the guise of the ex-boyfriend, per the outlet.
At one point, Blackwood even revealed she had the unlisted cell phone numbers of six AMC board directors.
Aron, who took home a $23.7 million pay package in 2022, didn’t cough up any money and reported his predicament to the FBI and the Department of Justice, he revealed in his tweet on X on Thursday.
In the post, Aron said he had disclosed his role in the scheme to AMC’s Board of Directors after Blackwood was sentenced to “nearly a year in jail” in July on counts of extortion and cyberstalking. She has been sentenced to time served.
“Last year I became the victim of an elaborate criminal extortion by a third party who was unknown to me related to false allegations about my personal life,” Aron penned. “With my access to resources, if I did not stand up against blackmail, who could?”
Representatives for AMC did not immediately respond to noti.group’s request for comment.
AMC had been on the verge of bankruptcy in 2021 but was able to avert disaster after millions of retail investors turned it into a so-called “meme stock” — with the shares soaring to nearly $60. The stock closed at $11 on Thursday.
Aron unloaded a trove of AMC shares worth $7.1 million in January 2022, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
It came just one year after Aron sold more than $40 million in shares, after disclosing his plan in an earnings call last August.
At the time, the CEO of the world’s largest movie theater chain said he was turning 67 in September, and that he was selling shares for estate planning purposes.
“Prudent estate planning suggests I should diversify my assets a bit, especially with Congress having been discussing imposing potentially soaring capital gains tax rates and significant changes to what can be passed on to one’s heirs,” said Aron, who’s now 69.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
