A former top lawyer for the film industry’s Washington-based lobbying organization was sentenced to a year in jail Friday for admittedly blackmailing and coercing sex from a young woman he met through a website that billed itself as a connecting place for “Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies.”
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Steven B. Fabrizio, now 58, and the woman, identified in court only as “A.W.,” met in August 2019 through an online service called “SeekingArrangement,” according to police and prosecutors. At the time, Fabrizio, of Chevy Chase, Md., was senior executive vice president and global general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the woman was a health-care professional in the District.
After their first sexual encounter, in her Northwest D.C. home on Aug. 19 that year, Fabrizio gave her $400 and insisted on continuing the relationship, authorities said. When the woman declined, telling him in a text message, “I don’t think this is right for me,” Fabrizio repeatedly threatened to expose her secret moonlighting to her employer, her co-workers, her parents and her landlord.
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“My conduct toward the victim was reprehensible,” Fabrizio told D.C. Superior Court Judge Marisa J. Demeo before she sentenced him Friday. “I’ve thought almost every day about the pain I’ve caused her, and the remorse and the shame for the way I treated her has been overwhelming. It has shaken me to my core.”
Fabrizio, described on his LinkedIn page as “one of the preeminent high tech copyright and content protection lawyers in the country,” was an entertainment attorney and partner at the firm of Jenner & Block before he joined MPAA in 2013. The lobbying group, which oversees the legislative and regulatory interests of major Hollywood film studios, fired Fabrizio after his August 2019 arrest.
He pleaded guilty last summer to one count each of blackmail and third-degree sex abuse. Besides sentencing him to a year behind bars, Demeo ordered him to register as a sex offender for 10 years after his release.
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In a court affidavit, police said the SeekingArrangment site defined “Sugar Daddies or Mommas” as “Successful men and women who know what they want ... and enjoy attractive company by their side,” while “Sugar Babies” were “Attractive people looking for the finer things in life. They appreciate exotic trips and gifts.”
Court papers describe interactions between Fabrizio and the woman on the website and in text messages.
“Hello!” the woman, A.W., said in a message to Fabrizio via the SeekingArrangement platform, when they first connected. She wrote, “I’m new to the website, but definitely open to it! & how do you like to spoil your women?? Haha.” The affidavit says Fabrizio answered, “My last baby got to go on vacations ... Tulum, the Maldives,” to which the woman replied, “Oh wowwwww.” She added that “this is my first time.”
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After their Aug. 19, 2019, sexual encounter, Fabrizio texted A.W., asking for another intimate get-together. She responded, “I’m sorry I’ve given it thought all last night & I don’t think this is right for me. it’s nothing personal. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” But Fabrizio refused to take no for an answer, according to the affidavit, which quotes from numerous lewd and threatening texts he sent to her, insisting that she have sex with him.
“Baby," one of his messages read. “Don’t be like that. I know where you live. I know where you work. Don’t think [her employer] would be happy to know that it’s young [professionals] are having sexual for money / Same for your landlord / Once more tomorrow morning. ... I’ll never bother you again.” In other, similar messages, he mentioned the names of A.W.'s parents and the town where she had grown up, authorities said.
“Why would you do this?” she said in one of several plaintive replies. “Coercing me into sex. Threatening to ruin my life? I don’t understand.”
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She had sex with Fabrizio a second time, out of fear and because he promised he would stop contacting her afterward, authorities said. But he continued texting, demanding more sex and threatening to expose her. She filed a complaint with D.C. police, and detectives arrested him Aug. 23, 2019, as he was arriving at her home.
Calling his behavior “a shameful lapse in the way I’ve tried to live my life,” Fabrizio told the judge Friday: "Nobody should be made to feel the way I made her feel. ... I know how horrible my conduct toward her was.”