New details emerge in woman’s multimillion-dollar extortion case

A woman accused of extorting $12 million from a Las Vegas businessman by threatening to reveal his personal secrets received cryptocurrency, luxury vehicles and an interest in a $1.8 million property at Mount Charleston, according to police and court records.

Ava Blige, 30, of Las Vegas was charged Sept. 30 with 27 felonies in the case. Authorities, meanwhile, have gone to great lengths to conceal the businessman’s identity.

The man’s name was blacked out in a declaration of warrant. Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Karen Bennett-Haron recently sealed an original criminal complaint in the case at the request of Clark County prosecutors after the document included his name. And attorneys for the Metropolitan Police Department have identified the man only as a “male individual” in a civil filing that seeks to confiscate cryptocurrency, vehicles and jewelry paid to Blige.

District Court filings, meanwhile, indicate that a Las Vegas businessman, Christopher Terry, has sued Blige over a business deal involving a Mount Charleston property and payments made to keep his personal information confidential.

Blige’s former civil attorneys described Terry in court records as a co-owner of a global financial services company, International Markets Live, or imarketslive. The company offers products and training to traders in the currency market, futures and financial markets.

Three attorneys from the law firm Holland & Hart, which sued Blige on behalf of Terry, either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment on this story.

Attempts to contact Terry directly for comment were not successful.

Blige has denied any wrongdoing in her criminal case. She and her attorney, Max Berkley of the Clark County public defender’s office, have declined comment about the charges against her.

Report of extortion

A Metro police warrant for Blige states that a detective with the Summerlin area command was contacted in October 2020 by an attorney who wanted to report an extortion. The attorney said the client was out of the country in Dubai at the time.

The warrant, released by Las Vegas Justice Court on Wednesday, identified the victim only as “Christopher.” His last name was blacked out in the report. The attorney, whose last name also was blacked out, told police his client employed Blige at his company in 2016 and that the two “were in a relationship until August of 2019.”

“After separating, Blige became very upset and began to make threats towards (the accuser),” police wrote. “(The attorney) explained (his client) wanted the separation to be on good terms, therefore (he) provided funding and gifts to Blige.”

Over time, the attorney said, the payments to Blige were not good enough for her, and she started threatening to release personal information about her lover if he failed to pay her.

“She would expose his company, and it would ‘be worse than what Steve Wynn went through,’” police wrote, adding that the attorney said his client had paid Blige about $12 million.

Wynn stepped down as CEO and chairman of Wynn Resorts in February 2018, after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment. He denied any wrongdoing.

Police held a videoconference with the man who claimed he had been extorted by Blige, and he said he first hired her as an assistant, but she was fired because of laziness. She then was hired as a personal assistant and was paid $4,000 a month. Blige also was “learning how to manage the trade market,” police wrote.

A romantic relationship between the two started in September 2017, according to the report.

A stormy relationship

The businessman told police he soon noticed that the couple would fight if he failed to give Blige money to purchase clothes, jewelry and cars.

“She would tell him he made her that way, so she had to live a certain lifestyle and he needed to pay for it,” police wrote. “She became extremely controlling as the relationship continued.”

The man said he cut off the relationship by 2019, although “he did want to continue to help her with trading and be friends.”

He told police that Blige started threatening to post information “she had learned during private conversations they had when they were dating, if he didn’t give her money.”

The accuser told police that Blige claimed to have recordings of him talking about his business partners.

“Some of the things he would say would be racially sensitive, complain about certain people’s character, and comments which would be concerning to one of his largest partners,” police wrote.

The businessman told police he was from New York and at one point worked for a construction company that was “run by the mob,” according to the report.

“He also told Blige about the secrets and layout of his business practices,” police wrote. “Some of this information which was told to Blige in confidence wasn’t even known by his biggest business partners.”

Recorded conversations

The businessman went on to tell police that when he would not give Blige money, she claimed she had recorded all their conversations, including Apple FaceTime talks between the two.

“If his business partners or people in the trade community were to hear or see him speak the way he spoke about them they would leave, and it would eventually cause his business to fail,” police wrote.

Police ultimately reviewed the contents of the man’s phones and found 25,000 text communications between him and Blige. At one point, according to the warrant, Blige told the businessman: “whatever Ava wants Ava gets.”

The man told Blige she could have a Mount Charleston residence after a lease expired on the property, but Blige still posted embarrassing photos of the man on Instagram, according to police, who said she claimed to have 8,000 photos she could distribute publicly.

Civil filings against Blige

In March, Terry filed suit against Blige in District Court over a leaseback interest in a property in the 4900 block of Cougar Ridge Trail. The property, according to the lawsuit and a Zillow listing, is at Mount Charleston and is worth approximately $1.8 million. A notice of default against Blige was subsequently filed in the case, according to court records.

Two months earlier, District Court records show that an individual initially identified only as John Doe also sued Blige. The suit was filed by the same attorneys who sued Blige on behalf of Terry. It alleges that Blige and the anonymous CEO of an anonymous company that specializes in educating customers about financial instruments and trading markets were in an intermittent, yearslong relationship.

The unnamed CEO, according to the lawsuit, ended up paying Blige “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in cash, cryptocurrency, cars and real estate” in exchange for not disclosing personal information Blige had about the executive. The suit lists cryptocurrency transfers to Blige that were worth at least $3.4 million at the beginning of 2021.

According to the suit, the unnamed CEO bought a lot of expensive vehicles and property “at the demands” of Blige. They included a 2016 Mercedes-Benz G Class worth $106,000, a 2017 Ferrari 488 worth $239,207, a 2017 Audi R8 valued at $143,143, a 2017 Land Rover worth $117,000, a Mount Charleston home worth $1.8 million, and a property near Valley View Boulevard and Warm Springs Road valued at $775,000.

At one point in the civil case, attorneys for the unnamed CEO attempted to have segments of the litigation sealed. Blige’s attorneys, in related filings, then claimed that the anonymous CEO was Terry and that he had presented a “manufactured extortion plot” to silence Blige.

Blige’s civil attorneys also wrote in one motion that the items purchased for her were gifts from the CEO and that the suit was brought for the purposes of harassing Blige. However, a notice of default against Blige was also listed in court records in the case.

In October of this year, attorneys for Metro filed a civil forfeiture action for $640,000 plus multiple crypto coins and vehicles. The only known claimant to the materials police were seeking to seize is listed in the filing as “Ava Blige.”

The Metro filing states that the assets were seized and subject to forfeiture after a “male individual” engaged in a personal relationship with Blige, who then demanded she be paid to keep the man’s personal information private.

“Male individual transferred the equivalent of at least 100 Bitcoins to Blige, or other cryptocurrencies,” according to the filing.

Blige has not responded to the Metro forfeiture filing.

A preliminary hearing in Blige’s criminal case is set for Dec. 8.

Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0390. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.