Producer charged over Letterman blackmail

3 Oct 2009, 10:34 am   -   Source: AFP
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Talk show host David Letterman has been caught up in a blackmail saga. (YouTube)

Talk show host David Letterman has been caught up in a blackmail saga. (YouTube)

A CBS television producer has been charged with blackmailing talk show host David Letterman, for having sex with female employees.

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A top TV producer has been charged with attempting to blackmail talk show star David Letterman for having sex with female staffers in a case rocking the US television world.

Joe Halderman, an Emmy Award-winning producer for CBS's real-life crime show `48 Hours', pleaded not guilty in New York on Friday to a grand larceny charge.

The indictment followed Letterman's stunning revelation of the alleged blackmail plot and his affairs with co-workers at CBS during his nationally broadcast talk show late on Thursday recorded before a live audience.

Details of the plot sounded like a mixture of the kind of gossip and crime scenes that Letterman, 62, and Halderman, 51, have spent years bringing to television viewers.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau told a press conference that Halderman waited outside Letterman's Manhattan home at 6am on September 9.

He allegedly demanded the talkshow host pay "a large chunk of money" for a screenplay treatment Halderman said he had written.

When Letterman looked, he found the document was in fact a chilling note referring to his professional success and "beautiful loving son", then warning that his "world is about to collapse about him," Morgenthau said.

Letterman was given two hours to respond.

Letterman's lawyer met with Halderman at a midtown Manhattan hotel where he was told to come up with $US2 million ($A2.3 million) in exchange for silence over Letterman's dalliances with staff, the prosecutor said.

Two more meetings took place between the lawyer and the blackmailer during which the attorney wore a hidden recording device.

On Wednesday, the attorney handed over a $US2 million ($A2.3 million) cheque faked by the authorities that Halderman allegedly deposited a day later.

He was arrested later outside the CBS studios.

He faces between five and 15 years in prison if convicted.

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