Former film industry lawyer in D.C. gets jail term for blackmail and coercing sex | Practice Source - Legal News and Views

The Washington Post reports

A former top lawyer for the film industry’s Washington-based lobbying organization was sentenced to a year in jail Friday for admittedly blackmailing and coercing sex from a young woman he met through a website that billed itself as a connecting place for “Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies.”

Steven B. Fabrizio, now 58, and the woman, identified in court only as “A.W.,” met in August 2019 through an online service called “SeekingArrangement,” according to police and prosecutors. At the time, Fabrizio, of Chevy Chase, Md., was senior executive vice president and global general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the woman was a health-care professional in the District.

After their first sexual encounter, in her Northwest D.C. home on Aug. 19 that year, Fabrizio gave her $400 and insisted on continuing the relationship, authorities said. When the woman declined, telling him in a text message, “I don’t think this is right for me,” Fabrizio repeatedly threatened to expose her secret moonlighting to her employer, her co-workers, her parents and her landlord.

“My conduct toward the victim was reprehensible,” Fabrizio told D.C. Superior Court Judge Marisa J. Demeo before she sentenced him Friday. “I’ve thought almost every day about the pain I’ve caused her, and the remorse and the shame for the way I treated her has been overwhelming. It has shaken me to my core.”