Man admits J-Lo wedding video ransom plot

One of two men who were arrested after they allegedly tried to sell Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez's stolen wedding video back to the couple for $1m (€790,000), pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny.

Tito Moses, 31, an ex-convict from Newark, New Jersey, admitted in Manhattan’s Supreme Court yesterday that he tried to get a $1m (€790,000) for the stolen video. He said he and an accomplice negotiated with a man they thought was a Lopez-Anthony representative.

The “representative” was in fact an undercover detective, prosecutors said.

Judge Bonnie Wittner promised Moses one and a half to three years in prison for his guilty plea. She said she would pass sentence after he is sentenced in a related, pending case in New Jersey and that the terms would run concurrently.

A video copy of the celebrity couple’s June 2004 wedding was on a laptop computer that was in Anthony’s Cadillac Escalade when it was stolen in in October 2005. The car was recovered in Newark but the laptop was gone. The New Jersey case is related to the car theft.

Prosecutors said Moses and his alleged accomplice, Steven Wortman, 49, a retired postal worker from New Jersey, called a person at Marc Anthony’s company and tried to sell the property back to the salsa star.

A New York City detective posing as a Lopez-Anthony associate had a series of negotiations with Moses and Wortman between December 20 and December 27, during which the men demanded $1m (€790,000) for the laptop, prosecutors said.

At one point, the detective rejected the $1m (€790,000) demand and Wortman threatened to destroy the laptop and its contents, the prosecutors said.

The detective, when negotiating later with Moses, haggled him down to $250,000 (€198,000) and the defendant agreed to bring the laptop to a Manhattan diner, the prosecution said. Police met the two men there and arrested them.

Wortman has pleaded not guilty to the charges of conspiracy, attempted grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, and his case is pending.