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TRAP PLAY TARGETS GIANTS

Feds yesterday busted a birdbrained Philadelphia man for allegedly trying to blackmail Giants Coach Tom Coughlin with false allegations of extramarital flings with two women.

Herbert Simpson, 30, was released on $10,000 bail and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation.

“The only thing I’ll say is I received two different letters, I turned them over to the league authorities as was recommended, and it’s in their hands,” Coughlin said after practice yesterday. “That’s all I can tell ya.”

The letters went from Coughlin to NFL security officers, and then to the FBI, according to a league spokesman.

The Super Bowl-champion coach received letters on July 30 and 31, purportedly from two women who said they would out him for sleeping with them during a team trip to Philadelphia in December 2007, according to an affidavit written by FBI Special Agent Todd Berry.

Both letters were actually written by Simpson, who used the names of two former female co-workers, Berry wrote.

Investigators interviewed the women named in the letters, who said they knew nothing about them and had never met Coughlin. The women also identified the handwriting as belonging to Simpson, who they said had written threatening letters to others in the past, according to authorities.

“I conducted an interview with [Simpson] in which he confessed to sending the letters,” Berry said.

“Simpson acknowledged that he had made up the information in the letters because he was seeking revenge against [the women] because of work-related issues.”

The Giants played the Eagles at Philadelphia on Dec. 9 and clipped them 16-13.

Simpson demanded that Coughlin pay between $10,000 and $15,000, or else he would make the fake affairs public, feds said.

Despite his demands for money, Simpson’s motive was revenge, prosecutors said.

“I can’t say it was the most well-thought-out plan I’ve ever seen,” Assistant US Attorney Derek Cohen told The Post. “He said he honestly didn’t believe he [Coughlin] would ever get the letters.”

If convicted of making the mail threats, Simpson faces up to two years behind bars and a $250,000 fine.

Simpson and his family, who live in western Philadelphia’s Drexel Hill neighborhood, did not return messages seeking comment.

Prosecutors declined to identify the women or the workplace where Simpson met them, referring to them only by initials “ND” and “AB” in court records.

In court yesterday, Simpson said he is currently employed at a car dealership, and before that worked at WaWa, a Philly-area food-store chain.

“Once [Coughlin] received the letters, it was reported to us, and we took it seriously,” Cohen said. “We took it seriously, and we acted upon it quickly.”

Simpson has been barred from traveling outside eastern Pennsylvania, and a judge ordered him to steer clear of Coughlin and his family.

paul.schwartz@nypost.com

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