A New Jersey man duped a Brooklyn teen into thinking that she had signed a contract agreeing to have sex with him — complete with a confidentiality agreement barring her from discussing the perverse paperwork, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Posing as the owner of several Victoria’s Secret and Champs Sports stores — even though he was unemployed — Gregory Schaffer, 35, offered the now-18-year-old woman a lingerie shop job in March 2012 and had her sign a flurry of documents.
Schaffer then told the victim that she’d just signed a contract that compelled her to perform a variety of sex acts, prosecutors said at his Brooklyn federal court trial.
“He told me I just signed a document agreeing to do those things with him,” she testified Monday. “I was shocked.”
Schaffer even claimed that he could sue her if she failed to follow the fine print and that she also had unwittingly signed a confidentiality agreement that barred her from discussing the arrangement.
“He said he could sue me for breach of contract and sue my great-grandmother,” she testified, referring to her legal guardian at the time.
Crying and frightened, the woman agreed to have sex with Schaffer. “I was upset,” she recalled of the encounter in a grimy Jersey City office. “I was disgusted.”
The woman testified that she feared for her family and believed that Schaffer could take her to court for not having sex with him.
Prosecutors said his plot developed after he answered her innocent Craigslist ad seeking summer employment in the retail field.
The Bayonne man first convinced her to pose in revealing outfits, saying he had contacts in the modeling industry.
Prosecutors said he ran similar scams on other young victims and that federal agents discovered images of him in various stages of undress with other “children” on his home computer.
But defense attorney Michelle Gelernt said in her opening statement that Schaffer never coerced the teen into anything and that she willfully answered his emails after the sexual encounter.
“The evidence will not prove that Gregory Schaffer enticed or coerced that teenage girl,” she said.
The trial resumes Tuesday.