http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wi...gion-apnewyork

Yoko Ono's driver pleads guilty in NYC to attempted grand larceny
By SAMUEL MAULL
Associated Press Writer

February 16, 2007, 4:16 PM EST

NEW YORK -- Yoko Ono's former driver, accused of trying to blackmail the widow of Beatle John Lennon for $2 million, pleaded guilty Friday to reduced charges that let him move from a city jail cell to federal immigration custody.

Koral Karsan, 50, pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny in the third degree, admitting he threatened to embarrass Ono unless she gave him "more than $3,000." Any defendant pleading guilty to that charge must admit trying to steal at least that much.

State Supreme Court Justice Daniel FitzGerald sentenced Karsan to 60 days in jail.

Karsan's lawyer, Robert C. Gottlieb, said the sentence was "time served" because his client has been in jail since Dec. 13. He said Karsan took the plea deal because he would have been in jail months longer waiting for a trial.

Eliot Mintz, a spokesman for Ono, said she told him she feels "vindicated because this man has admitted his guilt."

In the country illegally, Karsan now faces deportation to his native Turkey. His immigration lawyer, Jonathan E. Avirom, said the defendant will be handed over to immigration officials whenever they want to pick him up from Rikers Island.

Avirom said he will ask officials at an immigration hearing to let Karsan leave the United States voluntarily rather than be deported. He said a voluntary departure would spare his client a lot of procedural problems if he applies to return.

Karsan was charged initially with first-degree attempted grand larceny for threatening to release embarrassing recordings and photos of Lennon's 73-year-old widow unless she paid him $2 million. He faced up to 15 years in prison if he had been convicted on that charge.

As part of the plea deal, Karsan read a statement in court in which he admitted he gave Ono a letter on Dec. 8, 2006, telling her "if you want all of these recordings, e-mails, conversations and memories to vanish from the face of the earth and never hear from me again, all you have to do is send me an amount more than $3,000."

Soon after Karsan's arrest in December, Assistant District Attorney Anne Schwartz said the defendant had told Ono he "had people on standby waiting to kill her" if she didn't pay him.

Schwartz told FitzGerald: "We feel we could have proven the charges beyond a reasonable doubt," but accepted the plea to protect the privacy of Ono, her family and friends, and residents of the Dakota, the apartment building where Ono lives.

Outside court, Gottlieb continued to defend his client, saying Karsan was an aggrieved employee "who was sexually harassed" and otherwise mistreated by Ono and was demanding compensation, not blackmailing her.

"What happened in that letter goes on between lawyers everyday," Gottlieb said, calling the letter "inartfully" drafted. "His mistake was in not hiring a lawyer to be his mouthpiece."

On the night of Dec. 8, 1980, 26 years to the day before Karsan gave Ono his written demands, Lennon and Ono were returning to the Dakota where they lived, and where she still lives, when a gunman shot Lennon four times, killing him.
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He said a voluntary departure would spare his client a lot of procedural problems if he applies to return.
Screw his client. He should NEVER be allowed back into the country. EVER. Same should go for any illegal alien deported.