Sports

Bucks Co-Owner Wesley Edens Was Blackmailed for Half His Fortune After a Brief Affair

By Curtis Jones · May 12, 2026

In 2022, Wesley Edens — the billionaire co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, and part-owner of English soccer club Aston Villa — replied to a LinkedIn message from a woman named Changli “Sophia” Luo, 46, a Chinese-born Manhattan nonprofit founder who had reached out after his divorce.

What followed, federal prosecutors say, was one of the most elaborate extortion campaigns in recent memory — ending with a demand for $1.2 billion, doctored videos with Edens’s face edited onto another man’s body, hidden phones recovered from a laundry basket and a box of sanitary pads, and a federal indictment that went public this weekend when Edens’s spokesman confirmed his client was the unnamed victim in court documents.

Edens, 64, was not named in the original federal charging documents, which referred to the victim only as “CC-1.” The Wall Street Journal identified him from case details last week, and his representative then confirmed it publicly. “Mr. Edens will be making no comment on the case as the indictment speaks for itself,” his spokesman said, while also noting that Edens “cooperated with investigators out of concern for his own safety and that of his family” and expects to testify at trial.

The sequence of events, according to prosecutors, began when Edens responded to Luo’s LinkedIn outreach. They exchanged messages that turned personal. In June 2023, during their third meeting, they had sex at her Manhattan apartment. Afterward, Luo sent him what prosecutors describe as a love letter — “I never told you I love you, and tonight I want to tell you that, I have been restraining my feeling for you, as I do love you from the bottom of my heart!” Edens did not respond.

By November 2023, the communications had turned threatening. Luo told Edens her apartment had cameras and that “everything you did was caught on camera.” She warned she would go to the media unless he apologized. She contacted his then-girlfriend — now his wife — at her workplace under a fake name and told her she had slept with Edens. She reached out to his ex-wife. She threatened to approach his investors.

Then came the demand. Luo told Edens she wanted $1.2 billion — approximately half of his estimated $2.5 billion net worth. She framed it, prosecutors say, as the financial settlement she deserved after what she described as an encounter in which she alleged misconduct by Edens. A separate monetary settlement was ultimately reached between the two parties — the amount of which has not been disclosed — but the payments did not end the matter. Luo continued her campaign.

When FBI agents searched Luo’s apartment in May 2025, they found two phones hidden — one in a laundry basket, one in a box of sanitary pads. On one of the phones, investigators found pornographic videos and images in which Edens’s face had been digitally edited onto another man’s body. Prosecutors say Luo threatened to distribute both the authentic material from the June 2023 encounter and the fabricated material unless her financial demands were met.

Luo was arrested in June 2025 at JFK Airport while attempting to board a flight to China. She was charged with four federal counts: blackmail and threatening communications, use of interstate commerce in a scheme to extort, and two counts related to destruction of records. She has pleaded not guilty. She was released on a $500,000 bond and placed under home detention.

Her attorneys are asking the court to dismiss the case. In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, they argued the case involves a woman seeking accountability for what they characterize as “an inappropriate and aggressive sexual encounter” — a framing that directly contradicts the government’s version of events.

The trial is scheduled for later in 2026. Edens says he will testify.