Fortress Co-Founder Allegedly Extorted By Sexual Partner
Woman charged for allegedly threatening to share sex videos, photos of Wesley Edens, who also co-owns Milwaukee Bucks
Wesley Edens, the co-founder of Fortress Investment Group and co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, answered a LinkedIn message from a China-born entrepreneur in 2022 that blossomed into a correspondence.
Changli “Sophia” Luo was a divorcée living in New York City who had founded One World Initiative Advocacy, a Manhattan-based nonprofit that said it worked to produce video interviews with economists and environmentalists. Edens, a billionaire who had divorced his longtime wife the previous year, built a reputation for making counterintuitive financial bets. He successfully invested in subprime loans after the 2008-09 financial crisis, spent billions to build a private passenger railway in Florida and, in 2018, bought a majority stake in the then-struggling English soccer club Aston Villa.
Over messages, he told her how fun it was to own a sports team. And on their third get-together, Edens and Luo had sex at her apartment in June 2023, according to federal prosecutors.
The brief relationship spiraled into an alleged extortion plot.
Luo, 46, was indicted last year for allegedly trying to shake down Edens for more than $1 billion by threatening to publicize videos and photos of him having sex with her. Her litany of threats continued for months, as Luo reached out to Edens’s family members, told him she would approach investors, and pledged to destroy him, prosecutors said. She was charged with four counts, including blackmail and destruction of records, and has pleaded not guilty. Luo, who was released on a $500,000 bond and placed under home detention, is scheduled to go to trial later this year.
Edens, 64, hasn’t been named publicly as the target of the alleged scheme. After being contacted by The Wall Street Journal, a spokesman confirmed Edens is the person identified as Victim-1 in legal documents.
The spokesman said Edens had approached law enforcement out of concern for the safety of himself and his family. “Mr. Edens will be making no comment on the case as the indictment speaks for itself with respect to the charges against the defendant,” the spokesman said. “Mr. Edens expects to testify under oath at the upcoming trial.”
Lawyers for Luo have asked the judge to toss the charges, arguing their client was seeking justice and compensation for what they called “an inappropriate and aggressive sexual encounter.”
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought the case, declined to comment.
The case illustrates how executives face both reputational risks and potential harms to their businesses when romantic relationships go awry. It isn’t uncommon for the rich and famous to be targets of extortion demands, but victims are often hesitant to go to law enforcement. And prosecutions typically require not only the cooperation of the extortion victim, but also the public airing of the private matters that led to the conduct in question, particularly if the case goes to trial.
“Extortion victims usually don’t want to cooperate, and don’t want to go to the government—for the very reasons that extortion or blackmail work,” said Scott R. Wilson, a defense attorney who has advised clients grappling with similar matters.
The federal investigation of Luo began in early 2025, after a lawyer representing Edens reached out to leadership at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, said people familiar with the interaction.
After Luo and Edens had sex, prosecutors said, she sent him 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!” Luo wrote. Edens didn’t respond.
Months later, Luo’s communications turned from flattering to threatening, according to prosecutors. In November 2023, they said, Luo used a fake name to gain access to the doctor’s office where Edens’s then-girlfriend worked. Luo told the woman, who is now Edens’s wife, that she had had sex with Edens, whom she described as a terrible person.
Prosecutors say Luo contacted his ex-wife as well.
Months later, they said, she wrote to Edens alleging that he had sex with her while she was mentally incapacitated. She told him that her “home has cameras,” and that everything Edens “did was caught on camera.” She would go to the media, she said, unless he apologized.
“I am sure your family and business partners will learn about you and your misdeeds from these interviews and will provide exposure that will taint your record forever,” she wrote.
She gave him information for a mediator.
While Edens denied Luo’s allegations, he agreed to participate, believing a resolution would prevent harassment of his family and potential public embarrassment, according to prosecutors.
During a Zoom mediation overseen by a former judge, Luo negotiated with lawyers from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom who were representing Edens. Luo’s lawyers said in a court filing that he agreed to settle the matter for $6.5 million, with $1 million upfront.
After that settlement, Luo’s lawyers said she found out she had HPV-16, a sexually transmitted infection that can lead to cancer. She blamed Edens and sought to renegotiate the deal, her lawyers said. Prosecutors said she asked for as much as $1.215 billion.
Luo, who had been representing herself, then hired a lawyer, Tyrone Blackburn. He conveyed her threats, including that she would release compromising photos and would “destroy” Edens if he didn’t take “responsibility,” prosecutors said.
Arthur Aidala, one of Luo’s defense lawyers, said in an April court hearing that his client was being unfairly prosecuted for aggressive posturing made by a former lawyer during settlement talks over the sexual encounter. Aidala said the prior lawyer, Blackburn, had an obligation to warn Luo that the threats they were making in the talks could be considered extortion.
“One of our jobs, your Honor, as you know very well, besides advocating for our clients, is protecting them from themselves,” Aidala told the judge. “They don’t know the rules of the game.”
Blackburn said he never advised Luo to make the threats. “To ever say that I in any way encouraged her to engage in acts of extortion or failed to warn her that her actions and her demands could amount to or be viewed as an act of extortion, that is a baldfaced lie,” he said.
Last May, FBI agents searched Luo’s Manhattan apartment. Prosecutors said they found a phone hidden in a laundry basket and another in a box of sanitary pads. One phone had several pornographic videos and images that had Edens’s face on another man’s body, they said.
On June 14 of last year, federal agents arrested Luo at New York’s JFK airport as she was attempting to board a flight to China, prosecutors said.