Sting derails bid for 'Erin' payoff

By ANDREW GUMBEL

LOS ANGELES - An ex-husband and a former boyfriend hoping to make a fast buck from Erin Brockovich, the sassy legal campaigner whose life story has been turned into a hit movie, have been arrested and charged with extortion.

They had threatened to badmouth Brockovich to the tabloid media and demanded more than $US300,000 ($612,600) as the price for their silence.

In a series of twists worthy of a Hollywood movie of their own, ex-husband Shawn Brown and ex-boyfriend Jorg Halaby were lured into a police sting along with their lawyer and caught on videotape accepting money from Brockovich and her boss, Ed Masry.

According to Masry, the environmentalist lawyer played on screen by Albert Finney, the two men threatened to tell the newspapers that he and Brockovich had had an affair, and that Brockovich, a twice-divorced mother of three, had mistreated her children. Neither allegation was true, Masry said.

On Thursday, Brown, Halaby and their lawyer, John Reiner, met Masry and Brockovich in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles. All signed a document agreeing not to talk to the media. Masry and Brockovich then handed over two cheques, one for Brown for $US280,000 and one for Halaby for $US30,000.

The meeting was captured by a hidden video camera, and as soon as Masry and Brockovich left, police swooped to make the arrests.

"I was on the verge of crying," Brockovich said afterwards. "I felt like I was going to throw up. The whole thing made me sick."

The episode illustrated the perils of fame for a woman catapulted from obscurity to the status of folk hero thanks to Julia Roberts' winning portrayal in the film that bears her name. Erin Brockovich tells the story of how she talked her way into a job at Masry's law practice and uncovered a major environmental scandal in the Californian desert community of Hinkley, where hexavalent chromium had been dumped into the water supply and was poisoning the local population.

Brown, the ex-husband, does not feature in the film, but Halaby does. He is the gentle long-haired biker who agrees to look after Brockovich's children while she spends ever longer hours working on the Hinkley case.

Halaby was paid by Universal Studios for permission to portray him on screen but was apparently angry about the way his relationship with Brockovich ended right around the time she helped win a $US333 million settlement with the company responsible for the toxic dumping at Hinkley, Pacific Gas and Electric, and earned a $US2 million bonus.

"I was thankful for what he did," Brockovich told the Los Angeles Times. "And I was kind and good to him, but I was simply not in love with him."

Brown's bitterness has been evident for some time since he is locked in a child custody dispute.

Brockovich insisted she had tried to be fair to everyone in her life and in the movie: "I've been trying to do the right thing, and it kind of came back and bit me in the butt."

- INDEPENDENT