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New Details Emerge In Fremont Sex Tape Extortion Case

FREMONT (CBS SF) – A Fremont man who's been charged with attempted extortion for allegedly trying to get money from a married couple he videotaped having sex at the apartment that he shared with them told police that he wanted to make the victims feel tense, according to court documents.

Maninder Adama, 33, has "confessed in full" to recording the couple without their consent, holding for months onto the video of them having sex and watching it between 50 and 100 times, Fremont police Detective Michael Gebhardt wrote in a probable cause statement.

Adama was charged on Monday with two felony counts of attempted extortion and four misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy and is scheduled to return to court on Thursday to be assigned an attorney and possibly enter a plea.

Gebhardt wrote that the married couple, who are in their 20s, moved in March into a two-bedroom apartment in the 3500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in Fremont. Multiple other people, including Adama, also lived there.

Adama and his wife shared a room with the victims, with each couple sleeping in beds in the same room, and each couple used half of the room as their own, according to Gebhardt.

Adama made strange comments to the couple, such as, "I want to see what you guys do what you are alone," Gebhardt wrote.

The couple found Adama's comments strange but they believed he was kidding. The couple later recalled that Adama would sometimes leave his laptop computer open on his bed when he wasn't there, with the laptop's camera facing their bed, according to Gebhardt.

The couple moved to San Jose in April and didn't hear from Adama until June 19, when they received an email message from a sender who claimed to be in possession of a video that depicted them engaging in sexual acts together, Gebhardt wrote.

The suspect emailed the victims multiple times and on June 26 he sent five screenshots of a video recording of them naked and engaging in sexual intercourse and other sex acts as proof, Gebhardt wrote.

The suspect continued to email the victims and taunt them and made multiple comments to the female victim and told her he wanted to have sex with her, according to Gebhardt.

On July 5, the suspect threatened the victims by saying he would put the video on Facebook, "tag" them and send the video to their family members if they didn't pay him $2,000, Gebhardt wrote.

The victims reported the matter to police at that point and the female victim allowed Gebhardt to pose as her in emails in an attempt to establish a meeting with Adama.

About two weeks later, the suspect later raised the price to $5,000 and directed the victims to pay him via a Google Wallet transaction, Gebhardt wrote.

Detectives who analyzed the metadata embedded in the photos that the suspect sent by email determined the photos were coming from Adama's apartment in the 3600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, one block away from the location where the couple had lived, Gebhardt wrote.

Detectives served a search warrant on that apartment last Thursday and Adama was located and arrested. Several laptops and electronic devices outfitted with the ability to record audio and video were seized, according to Gebhardt.

When police questioned Adama, "he stated he was solely responsible for the crimes and that his wife (and others who had lived in the apartment) had no knowledge of what he had done," Gebhardt wrote.

© Copyright 2017 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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