Women Accused of Trying to Blackmail DuPont Heir

They allegedly tried to get more money after being paid for sex

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT – The women called him “master.” He called them his “slaves.”

But the women Connecticut financial titan Stephen Dent met online seem to have the power.

They used that power to extract more than $200,000, which Dent gave them voluntarily in exchange for both online companionship and sex.

Then, they allegedly tried to get more.

At least three of the women or their associates are accused of trying to blackmail Dent, 54, a Harvard-educated multimillionaire, DuPont heir and successful entrepreneur who lives on a private street. Two of those cases have resulted in FBI-Greenwich, Conn., Police Department investigations, and extortion charges.

All of the extortion attempts allegedly came as a result of relationships Dent formed by trolling the Web site SeekingArrangement.com. Police records indicate Dent visited the site habitually for at least two years, looking for women to chat with and, in some instances, to meet for sex. He paid women from the site as much as $15,000 for sex, according to police reports released recently in response to a public-records request from Greenwich Time.

SeekingArrangement.com caters to older, wealthy men, or “sugar daddies,” willing to pay young women, or “sugar babies,” for their companionship. The site, based in Nevada, brands itself “a match making website for wealthy benefactors, and attractive guys and gals” and was recently profiled in New York Times magazine.

The owner of the Web site, Brandon Wey, denied the site was connected with extortion or prostitution and said no one else has encountered problems as Dent did.

“He is obviously doing something wrong because no one else is having this problem,” said Wey.

‘Russian Mafia’ initially blamed

On August 2, 2007, Dent’s activities first became a law-enforcement matter when Greenwich Police Detective Robert A. Brown Jr. got a phone call from a private investigator in Arizona. The investigator told Brown his client, Dent, was being blackmailed – possibly by the Russian Mafia.

Dent later told his story to Brown and the FBI.

According to the initial report Brown wrote on the case, Dent “stated that he had solicited the services of women through SeekingArrangement, for both email correspondence and sexual liaisons,” often at a local hotel.

According to the report, Dent told police he paid “approximately $15,000″ for one sexual encounter. He also told police that in the first eight months of 2007, he “spent approximately $200,000 on women that he has either had sex with or just met online.” The report said he gave some of the money to women he didn’t have sex with because “they were down on their luck,” giving it “out of the goodness of his heart.”

With Dent’s cooperation, the FBI and Greenwich police made a plan to trap the accused extortionist, who falsely claimed to be a member of the Russian Mafia and demanded $40,000. Dent set up a meeting and police arrested Roy Sipel, a Queens man who said the millionaire had paid Sipel’s girlfriend to perform sex acts described by Sipel’s attorney as “vile and vulgar.”

In a plea agreement, Sipel was sentenced to 16 months in prison in March 2008. Sipel’s lawyer at the time, Robert Bello, told the judge that Sipel had become angry after learning that his girlfriend engaged in sex acts with Dent. “He heard what she went through, and he was going to be her avenging angel,” Bello told the judge.

Dent returned to Web site

Then, on Jan. 28, 2009, the FBI called Greenwich police to inform them of another apparent plot to extort Dent.

After talking to another private detective hired by Dent, police found that just months after Sipel’s sentencing, Dent was back on SeekingArrangement.com again, this time with a new account, but still corresponding with the same women. “He closed his previous account and began to use a different e-mail address but the same screen name to correspond with his women friends,” police documents state.

Dent’s Internet chats once again turned ugly when Dawn Jessop, 28, of Ohio, allegedly began blackmailing Dent in November 2008, threatening to release their correspondence and expose Dent to the community for his alleged role in “patronizing prostitutes,” according to police documents.

Dent then wired two $25,000 payments to Jessop and her mother, and $50,000 more to her husband, Christopher Jessop, officials say. It was not until the FBI began to survey Dent’s arrangements to drop $50,000 in the Jessops’ account in January 2009 that Greenwich police were called to intervene, according to the warrant.

The Jessops currently face charges of first-degree larceny by extortion and first-degree conspiracy to commit larceny. Dawn Jessop was released on bail last week, but her husband is being held on $300,000 bail.

According to police documents, Dent was also blackmailed for $9,000 by a third woman, but no charges have been filed in that case.

Attached to a police report was a copy of an e-mail that the report called “a form letter” that Dent sent to a prospective companion. The Time requested and received it, albeit in redacted form. Despite much of the detail being blacked out, it does shed light on some details of Dent’s arrangements:

“I can only meet during the weekdays around midday. … in general I am not available at night or during the weekends. Furthermore, we would need to meet only when my wife is away. Since I don’t really travel, for the most part the meetings would have to be out here in the Greenwich-Stamford area.

“…Regarding your financial assistance, my initial thoughts are cash compensation in the range of $2,000 to $3,000 per meeting, assuming that we meet about twice a month, plus expenses. If there is anything of an impersonal nature (such as electronics items) that you would like me to purchase for you online and have shipped to your home, I’d be happy to do this. If you are interested in relocating, I will pay for your moving expenses and switch you over to a monthly allowance which would cover your expenses. If you have other financial needs, I’d be happy to discuss them. I am flexible on this whole subject, and am even willing to wire money directly to your checking account if needed.”

No charges against Dent

Despite that written evidence of Dent’s offer to pay for sex, Greenwich police elected not to charge him with a crime.

“The decision was made in 2007 not to pursue the comments that he made about prior activity,” said Detective Lt. Mark Marino, head of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division. “At the time we were pursuing that case, we were treating him as a victim and pursuing a more serious offense with regards to the extortion.”

When asked if police gave Dent preferential treatment because of his status in the community, Marino replied, “Absolutely not.”

Marino said finding enough probable cause to charge Dent with a crime based on his statements would have been difficult.

“Situations like that would be extremely difficult to prosecute based just on those statements, without any other type of corroborating evidence and without being able to identify the other individuals involved,” said Marino, who declined to comment on the discussions that took place between investigators and Dent over his admissions. “Cases are coming in every day.

We have to make decisions on where to best allocate our resources,” said Marino.

He added that the decision not to investigate Dent also partly rested on the fact that police did not want to deter other victims of extortion from coming forward.

Throughout both criminal cases, Dent has remained an unnamed victim in court.

‘A difficult period in his life’

Dent’s attorney, Steven Frederick of Stamford, did not comment on the statements in the police report, but said he wished to point out that his client was “going through a difficult period in his life,” when these events occurred. “He made some terrible mistakes and he fully regrets those mistakes,” said Frederick, who added that Dent “is being treated for the issues relating to his past conduct.”

Mark Sherman, the Stamford attorney representing Christopher Jessop, declined to comment on how Dent’s other activities and the other extortion cases might be useful to his client’s defense.

“Obviously, information about any of these individuals in this case, including my client, is helpful to the defense,” he said.

“Whether it can be used at trial is a completely separate issue.” Greenwich Attorney Mickey Sherman, who is representing Dawn Jessop, declined comment.

Web site owner denies wrongdoing

Wey, who goes by the name Brandon Wade for business purposes, stressed that in spite of this case, SeekingArrangement.com is not an outlet to solicit prostitution.

“We are very strict on this policy. We tell both the men and females that it is a dating site, it is not an escort site,” said Wey.

“This is just so strange to have to have a person who has been on the site for so long, faced so many cases of extortion and still continues to use it.”

The FBI declined comment on the case, although an FBI agent in New Haven who formerly worked in an anti-cybercrime unit said the scenario of a person being extorted multiple times through an online dating site is rare.

“Based upon my experience. I haven’t seen it very often here in Connecticut,” said Special Agent Jane Domboski.

Married in 1986

According to town records, Dent resides on a private street in a gated house assessed at $4.5 million and owns his own investment firm, although he recently closed the doors of his office in Old Greenwich.

Dent, who told police in 2007 that his net worth is approximately $100 million, is also the founding funder of the Greenwich Science Center, a nonprofit educational organization based in Stamford, which is now defunct.

According to Dent’s 1986 wedding announcement published in the New York Times, he is the great-grandson of the late Alfred Irenee du Pont, the former head of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., a major American chemical company founded in 1802.

Frederick said the Greenwich Science Center, opened in 2007, ceased operations several months ago due to the economic climate and Dent’s Old Greenwich company, Dentinvestments LLC, closed its Old Greenwich office due to downsizing.

Dent’s identity was revealed in the Jessops’ arrest warrant, which is on file at the state Superior Court in Stamford. While Dent’s name was redacted in police reports, both cases are tied together by the warrant, which outlines the history of the two investigations.

“On January 28, 2009 (the FBI) notified this agency about a possible extortion from a Greenwich resident. The victim is Stephen Dent. This affiant had a similar case in 2007 where Dent was the victim of extortion,” police wrote in the Jessops’ warrant.

Frederick said Dent chose to cooperate fully with authorities during both investigations and is looking forward to putting everything behind him.

“He chose to cooperate with the police in order to ensure that the perpetrators of the extortion were brought to justice despite the personal risks associated with that cooperation,” Frederick said.

Frederick said Dent is moving forward with support from his family and hopes his story will be a warning for others.

“He is fortunate to be able to rely on the tremendous support he has received from his wife and family and from his close friends,” Frederick said. “He further hopes the publicity this matter has received will be useful in teaching the public the dangers of Internet crime.”

Dent declined several requests for an interview.

The Jessops are due back in court on May 27.

Courtesy The Houston Chronicle

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