Static Zombie

Having just experienced, "pay an additional $4,000 or I'll file an additional form which will result in your cargo container being dumped into the Pacific," I'd say the answer is YES.

are you planning on blackmailing someone or are you just musing about hypothetical situations? i think both would be blackmail unless the nanny is a minor and then that would be extortion.

On this week's Joan of Arcadia, Joan discovered that the popular jock running for student council was gay. She contemplated revealing that to the student body in an effort to sabotage his candidacy. I wondered why she didn't just tell the jock she knew his secret, and tell him to drop out or else she'd reveal it. Which led me to wonder, in turn, if that would be illegal. I'm sure blackmail goes on all the time in politics. Is it legal? Where's the legal line? What separates extortion (which I'm pretty sure is the situation Russell described) from blackmail?

i had to look a long time before i found a satisfactory answer to the difference between extortion and blackmail. btw, i checked this before my first post. i found that extortion has the added element of an illegal act outside of the blackmail. thus, if the nanny were 15 then statutory rape is the added illegal act and that's extortion. if she's 18 it's blackmail.

Whoa! I've only seen a few episodes of JoA, but I thought Joan was a decent kid. Not only does she want to "blackmail" one of her classmates, but because he's *gay*???

If this were blackmail, would it also fall under the label of a hate crime?

Sheesh!

Well, it was one of the many moral chrisis that God puts her through, causing her to realize things about herself and to help her family. She didn't actually go through with it, so I think she still falls into the "decent kid" category.

Hate crime? No. She wasn't planning to beat the kid up or do anything physical, and I'm pretty sure you have to physically hurt someone for it to be a hate crime.

"you have to physically hurt someone for it to be a hate crime"

i don't believe that is the case. painting a swastika on a synogogue or burning a cross on someone's lawn constitutes a hate crime.

really? I thought those were just something like destruction of property or something similar. More proof that I'm not a lawyer I suppose.

What about the blackmail for being gay thing? Would that be a hate crime? I still don't think so, but hey, I was wrong before :)

if i have been wrongly accused of something, and the people say "tell us the truth or we will expell you" is this illegal blackmail?, remembering that i have done nothing wrong in the first place

Blackmail is a form of extortion. Extortion is a felony in all states, except that a direct threat to harm the victim is usually treated as the crime of robbery. Extortion may be classified under different categories of seriousness depending on the degree of wrongful intent. Blackmail is a form of extortion in which the threat is to expose embarrassing, damaging information to family, friends or the public.

here is it in simple terms. Exortion, you force people to do something by use of threat. With Blackmail, you threten people with past experiences or knowledge unless they do something.

Example-
Extortion- Give me $100 a week or you store might be burned to the ground

Blackmail - you threaten to expose a persons sexual habits if they don't drop out of the race, or close their business.

It is a thin line, but usually people are usually charged criminaly with extortion. Blackmail is usually a he said, she said kind of deal, hard to prosecute.

I know what I am talking about, I practice law in NYC and am a part time law professor at NYU.

My ex was on disability for an injury he received on a job (construction.) during the time he was "injured" He managed to build a deck, install a hot tub, take apart a totaled blazer and fix the damage. I have several photos of the process from start to finish. If I say something is this blackmail? If he is commiting fraud, isnt that wrong? Who should I tell? Should I tell?

My runaway bride split and of course will keep a 12k ring. She is guilty of tax evasion (90k under the table). Am I also guilty having this knowledge of the tax situation? If I threaten to expose her to the IRS (or ring back) is this illegal? Blackmail?