Another Elmo outrage!
“Bad Elmo” — a costumed panhandler who has freaked out tourists on two coasts with his anti-Semitic rants — was hauled into a Manhattan courtroom today for allegedly trying to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts.
Transient loon Dan Sandler, who also uses the name Adam Sandler, threatened to spread false rumors that the Girl Scouts of the USA arranged sexual encounters between underaged girls and adult men, prosecutors allege in the bizarre new extortion and harassment case.
Even before today’s indictment, Sandler, 50, had been a disturbing Internet sensation for his antics as Elmo. Last year, he was arrested in Times Square and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for screaming “The Jews are responsible for everything that’s wrong with the world!” and “I hate Jews!” while begging for tips in full Elmo regalia.
Now Sandler has apparently gone off the rails — further besmirching the reputation of the scandal-knocked, fuzzy red Sesame Street character.
VIDEO CONTAINS OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE
While panhandling in San Francisco recently — again dressed as Elmo — Sandler grabbed a kid by the arm and began “making remarks about sexual behavior and sodomy while the child was there,” Manhattan prosecutor Lauren Littman said at Sandler’s arraignment today. The child’s parents declined to press charges, she said.
And in these latest Girl Scouts extortion troubles, Sandler allegedly threatened to use his “Bad Elmo” spotlight to destroy the reputation of the entire organization, for which he’d done computer programming work on a temp basis at the West 23rd Street headquarters five years ago.
“I will show up at Girl Scout functions and other places that parents and kids congregate and hold signs, connecting the Girl Scouts… with the Cambodian Rape Camp man,” he wrote in one in a series of dozens of allegedly threatening emails.
The “Cambodian Rape Camp man” was a reference to himself — in 1999, Sandler was arrested in Cambodia for running a live porn website there called, “Welcome to the Rape Camp,” prosecutors say.
“There is no evidence that anyone at the Girl Scouts knew about Sandler’s history in Cambodia when he was hired through the temporary employment agency,” prosecutors stress in court papers.
Sandler is now being held on $200,000 bail, despite his lawyer’s arguments that his client is so mentally ill, no one could ever have taken his alleged threats seriously. Sandler was hauled here in cuffs from San Francicso, where he’d been buskering as Elmo and living in his car. En route to New York, he told cops that the State Department, Michael Milken and the Singapore government were all somehow out to get him, court documents say.
“I want to continue doing my Elmo gig because I make a lot of money. I want to do that the rest of my life,” he told cops.
Sandler’s Girl Scout troubles began last year, while he was still in New York, with a series of allegedly unwanted romantic emails to his former supervisor, who is not being named by authorities.
“Do you think that I am a scary guy? I am just a little different,” Sandler allegedly wrote the supervisor, a full four years after his temp job ended.
“If I can not make this Elmo gig work out of New York I will just stay in New York,” he wrote the woman. “Please let me resurface in your life right now!” he wrote.
Sandler brags in one email that videos of him ranting against Jews while dressed as Elmo are making him famous. “Apparently my you tube [sic] rants have 200,000 hits,” he boasts.
But the emails allegedly took an more twisted and larcenous turn in the following months, even as the supervisor repeatedly emailed back demanding he stop.
“P.S. how you treat me as a person will go a long way in regards to how I treat the Girl Scouts in the press, on the Internet and on u-tube[sic]. (in other words if the Girl scouts treat me nice I will forget the fact that I worked there,)” he adds.
“If I go the controversial route I will probably publish fictitious content about the Girl Scouts. And name names….Like your name! Because you were my caring supervisor who now gives me the silence [sic] treatment,” prosecutors say he wrote in October.
By February, he’d begun sending the woman semi-nude photos of himself, and demanding reparations for being “harassed” and “wrongfully terminated” by the Girl Scouts.
“I want a telecommute job from home for life at 150K,” he demands in an email. “Or a 2 million dollar Cash settlement.”
“As you know the NewsPapers [sic] and media like to cover my evil Elmo scenario and to some degree my involvement with your org.,” he wrote.
“Why did you, knowingly, hire the Cambodian Rape Camp man and let him work with children for close to 2 years?” he wrote the supervisor in late February, in an apparent example of the kind of false rumor he intended to spread.
“Can I please send you a plane ticket? …Why freeze your but [sic] off for those Jews in NY? Put a Hello Kitty suit on and join my team,” he begged. “Believe me you will be much happier!”
Girl Scout officials and prosecutors stressed that Sandler was never a direct employee and did not interact with children. “Girl Scouts of the USA does not comment on ongoing criminal investigations and is cooperating with the New York District Attorney’s Office in its investigation of the matter,” a spokesman for the organization said in a written statement. “Sandler was never directly employed by Girl Scouts of the USA.”
Sandler is due back in court June 13.