Crime: The Iniquitous Depths

“I have been sentencing people for 27 years,” Judge Irving Ben Cooper told the defendant in Manhattan’s Federal Court, “and it has been a long time since I have come upon a case that was so revolting as your case. I think you are so steeped in filth that as I read the report I cringed, and my flesh crept as I read the depth of iniquity to which you have allowed yourself to sink.”

What prompted that condemnation from Judge Cooper—together with a five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine—was Defendant John Fellebaum’s part in a nationwide extortion ring that has turned blackmail of homosexuals into a lucrative, cruelly efficient business. Though the full dimensions of the ring are still not known, 15 members have been arrested over the past year, and eight of them, including Fellebaum, have pleaded guilty. The ring’s victims —many of them prominent in entertainment, business, education and Government—have numbered perhaps 1,000, and their total payoff is estimated to run as high as $2,000,000.

“Chickens” & “Shakemen.” The ring’s chief method of operation was as simple as it was effective. A decoy—the part played by Fellebaum, 27, an ex-weight lifter—would pick up a victim, usually in a bar, take him to a hotel room and engage in a homosexual act. The decoy, called a “chicken,” would then steal or take by force the victim’s credit cards and identification, and give them to the ring’s “shakemen.” Days, weeks, or even months later, the shakemen, posing as police officers, would visit the victim. They would tell him that the chicken had been arrested for homosexual acts and had named the victim as one of his partners. The whole thing could be hushed up, they would add, with money.

Most victims paid, surrendering anywhere from $500 to $50,000, depending on what the extortioners had the temerity to ask. One wealthy Midwestern schoolteacher coughed up $120,000 over a four-year period. For those who would not pay, the gang was quite ready to carry out its threat of exposure. The marriage of one victim who refused to be intimidated was wrecked when the gang informed his wife; an Army officer committed suicide rather than submit to pressure. One alleged shakeman awaiting trial, a former Chicago detective, had authentic Chicago police badges, arrest warrants, and even extradition papers in his possession when the FBI arrested him in June. Yet toy-store badges could be, and sometimes were, used just as effectively as real badges. Apparently the victims were so racked by feelings of guilt that few of them had enough self-possession to challenge the blackmailers.