Warriors Coach Mark Jackson Blackmailed by Ex-Stripper Mistress

Amid fan resentment over Golden State’s coming move from Oakland to San Francisco, the NBA team is also dealing with head coach Mark Jackson’s personal issues, namely an extortion plot by his former mistress, an ex-stripper named Alexis Adams.

Adams and her co-conspirator, Marcus Shaw, were arrested by the FBI earlier this week. They were threatening to blackmail Jackson, who’s also a minister, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The duo claimed they would go public with Adams and Jackson’s affair and release photos of his genitals to “the vultures in the media,” the Huffington Post reported.

Jackson and Adams’s affair reportedly began six years ago and lasted less than a year. The relationship began while Adams was working at a gentleman’s club in New York and while Jackson was a New Jersey Nets announcer. The affair ended when Jackson would not leave his wife of sixteen years and his four children.
A stranger approached Jackson in April, at a hotel in Memphis, and showed him the implicating photographs and a CD that allegedly contained voice messages Jackson left for Adams while they were having their affair. The man told Jackson that he found the photos and CD in a storage locker he had recently bought. Jackson gave the man $5,000 for the items and immediately destroyed them.

Shortly after, a “Mark Smith” sent a message to Jackson’s wife, from the email address tencommandment7@gmail.com, telling her she could buy the pictures or they would be sent to the media. Jackson himself replied and offered $200,000 to make the sordid situation disappear.

The extortion plot was reported to police, and they traced the IP address, which led them to Shaw. Authorities obtained a subpoena of Shaw’s phone and text message records and determined that he was involved in the extortion scheme. In 1996, Shaw was convicted of aggravated robbery. In 2005, he was arrested for murder, aggravated assault, robbery, and kidnapping, but the charges were dismissed.

Jackson recognizes the poor judgment he used, both in having the affair to begin with and in trying to deal with the blackmail and extortion scheme himself. “I made some egregious errors. I apologize for any embarrassment I may have caused my family, friends and, of course, the Warriors,” he said in a statement.

The Warriors organization does not condone Jackson’s actions, but in a statement of their own, they said they “fully support Coach Jackson during this time and thank law enforcement authorities and the FBI for their prompt assistance in helping Coach Jackson and his family.”