FBI Busts Alleged Extortionist in Tom Cruise Case

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday July 26, 2007 02:55 PM EDT

Tom Cruise

Albert Ferreira/startraks

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Yahoo Buzz
• E-mail

The FBI has arrested an Arizona man accused of attempting to extort more than $1 million from Tom Cruise, according to The Smoking Gun.

David Hans Schmidt, 47, was taken into custody by federal authorities on Tuesday for allegedly attempting to sell the star a large collection of private photographs from Cruise's November 2006 wedding in Italy to Katie Holmes.

Cruise's lawyer, Bert Fields, told the Smoking Gun that the pictures had been stolen and that Schmidt, who reportedly has a history of distributing celebrity sex videos, had contacted reps for Cruise earlier this year regarding the wedding material.

The actor's reps then alerted the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, said Fields.

A clerk in the court's pretrial services office said Schmidt's arraignment was held Wednesday, according to the Smoking Gun. No further details were available.

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise at their wedding Photo by: Robert Evans

In the past 10 years, reports the Web site, Schmidt has been involved in the attempted sale of X-rated images of Jamie Foxx and topless photos of U.S. soldier Jessica Lynch, among other transactions.

In addition, says Smoking Gun, he contacted Paris Hilton and Colin Farrell in advance of the sale of explicit images featuring them, to see if they would like to purchase their photos before being made public.