Brian Brobbey blackmailed: explosive reports emerge about Ajax striker

06-06-2025

As per Het Parool and VoetbalPrimeur, Ajax's Brian Brobbey has reportedly been the victim of blackmail. A good friend of his was 'shot as a result and barely managed to survive'.
According to Dutch investigative circles, Brobbey fell victim to what is referred to as the 'Holleeder method'. This refers to when one Willem Holleeder and his accomplices deliberately created fake conflicts in which they made wealthy businessmen believe that they had problems with heavy-hitters from the criminal circuit. They then offered to solve these fictional problems in exchange for large sums of money.
Advertisement
Brobbey's unfortunate situation concerns the notorious Antillean-Amsterdam criminal Jeymon A. (31) according to sources within the police and justice system. He used a 'classic extortion trick' to get the better of Brobbey.
Jeymon A., known in the underworld as 'Piccalo', approached the Ajax striker in 2022 at Valhalla, an annual festival at the RAI complex. During that approach, Brobbey was told that 'Moroccans from Utrecht' were looking for him. Jeymon A. claimed to have solved that for him, but made it quickly known that he wanted a fee.
Brobbey claimed that he did not know the 'Moroccans from Utrecht' and told the story to a good childhood friend, who at that time was himself the subject of an investigation into drug trafficking. While it's likely Brobbey did not know that at that time, the childhood friend promised to solve the problem himself.
Reports of attacks
During the night of 15 to 16 January 2023, Brobbey's mother-in-law's mailbox was damaged with heavy fireworks. Two months later, an explosive was set off at Brobbey's car on the night of the 18th of March. This attack resulted in a tumultuous night for the striker, who came on as a substitute in the 77th minute a day later in De Klassieker, when Ajax lost 3-2 and ultimately gave up the title.
Advertisement
At first, the police assumed intimidation came from Feyenoord hooligans. However, it was later linked to the extortion of Jeymon A. With this, the incidents only got worse.
First, his sister-in-law's car was set on fire. Then, two months later, on July 9, Brobbey went to play padel with his brothers and his childhood friend. In the evening, said friend met Jeymon A. on his own initiative, to try and solve the problem. Following a confrontation, the friend was eventually shot and barely made it to a police station.
Reports continue, claiming that although the childhood friend didn't want to say anything about the incident, later phone records show that he 'took a bullet for Brobbey'. Subsequently, the pressure on the Ajax man increased.
The striker received a text message that he 'has to pay 150,000 euros before the end of the month, otherwise they will do it differently'. It is also claimed that they know where he lives.
Advertisement
Fortunately, the shooting incident turned out to be Jeymon A.'s last violent incident after he was arrested for various cases. He has now been sentenced to 10 years in prison for attempted manslaughter of Brobbey's childhood friend, possession of a firearm and possession of 1.6 kilos of MDMA. There are no indications that Brobbey paid the money. The striker is said to have given his childhood friend money, but according to him, that was unrelated to the incident.
GBeNeFN | Max Bradfield

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Richard Lee, activist who founded a pot ‘university,' dies at 62

Boston Globe

a day ago

Boston Globe

Richard Lee, activist who founded a pot ‘university,' dies at 62

Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Cannabis became his salvation -- and his life's mission. Advertisement In 2010, the low-key Mr. Lee turned into a national face of the legalization movement when he spent more than $1.3 million of his own money -- earned from running a wide array of cannabis-related businesses in Oakland -- to spearhead California's Proposition 19, a trailblazing statewide effort to legalize cannabis for adult use. The measure failed, but it earned 46.5 percent of the vote, setting the stage for successful initiatives in Colorado and Washington two years later, Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an interview. Twenty-two more states enacted similar laws in the ensuing years, including California in 2016. Advertisement With cannabis now legally regulated for either medical purposes or adult use in 40 states, the product might strike some -- at least those who know their indica from their sativa -- as rather mainstream. But for most of Mr. Lee's career, it was anything but. He routinely began staff meetings by reminding those who worked for him that they could be raided and arrested at any moment, and commending them for their courage. 'Richard was engaging in this sort of activism in a climate that was in many ways hostile to what he was doing and to his ideas,' Armentano said. 'And I think that sometimes is forgotten. Richard Lee, for lack of a better term, was engaging in civil disobedience.' He was a successful entrepreneur, but colleagues said his motives went far beyond profit. 'Richard firmly believed this war on drugs was a war on all of us,' Jones said in an interview. 'Marijuana prohibition had completely failed, and cops were distracted going after the smell of a joint instead of going after violent crime, like a carjacking Richard once suffered in Houston.' Outlawing cannabis also allowed a criminal underground to flourish off its trade, Mr. Lee argued. 'I mean, come on,' he said in a 2010 interview with Tad Friend of The New Yorker. 'Didn't Prohibition help Al Capone?' He eventually built a microempire of pot in a formerly desolate swath of downtown Oakland, which to the initiated began to take on the vibe of Europe's Elysian Fields of weed. 'Amsterdam is our model city,' he said in a 2010 interview with NPR, which bestowed on him his 'Appleseed' nickname. 'When I go there, I see tourists and jobs and taxes being created from the cannabis industry, and I think we can do that here.' Advertisement Over the years, he operated two Amsterdam-style coffee shop dispensaries in the neighborhood, Bulldog Coffeeshop and Coffeeshop Blue Sky; a gift shop that grew cannabis in the back; a pot-themed museum; and a cannabis-themed newspaper, The Oaksterdam News. The centerpiece of this smoker's-paradise neighborhood was Oaksterdam University, housed for years in a 30,000-square-foot former charter school, with branches in Los Angeles, Michigan, and Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. The school, which has been largely online since the pandemic, offers coursework in all manner of careers in cannabis, whether for prospective startup founders or 'budtenders,' as dispensary workers are known. To Mr. Lee, cannabis was serious business and should be treated as such. 'We tell our students that you want to avoid the idea of being a typical stoner who just gets high and throws the Frisbee,' he told The New Yorker. Richard Seib Lee was born Oct. 7, 1962, in Houston, the fourth of five sons of Robert Lee, who ran a members-only library for tax lawyers and accountants, and Anne (Edwards) Lee, a teacher. He grew up in a conservative household -- his parents were Goldwater Republicans -- in a state long known for its severe marijuana laws. That is not to say that the young Lee did not inhale. 'He was a head,' his brother Donald recalled in an interview. Richard Lee studied communications at the University of Houston but left to work in concert production, which indirectly led him to his ultimate career. 'I fell into it, right?' he joked to The New Yorker. Advertisement Despite the frigid climate for marijuana in his home state, Mr. Lee by the mid-1990s was growing cannabis in Texas and shipping it to an organization called the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, which served medical patients. He moved to Oakland in 1997. His many operations in the city eventually helped finance the push for Proposition 19, a state initiative with national implications. 'We became the campaign heard around the world,' Jones said. But the national attention, she added, might also have made them a target. On April 2, 2012, federal agents descended on the Oaksterdam campus, as well as Mr. Lee's other businesses and his apartment, seizing countless items, including student records and tens of thousands of plants growing in the school's basement. The raid made headlines nationally. But he never faced any charges -- nor, despite years of trying, did he ever learn why the raid took place, Jones said. Records remain sealed. Still, the timing seemed suspicious. At the time, the Oaksterdam team was working to apply its Proposition 19 playbook to the upcoming Washington and Colorado measures. In the team's view, the raid was probably a scare tactic, Jones said. Regardless, Mr. Lee feared future legal jeopardy, so he retired from all of his ventures and ultimately returned to Houston, where he had been caring for his ailing mother in recent years. In addition to his mother and his brother Donald, Mr. Lee leaves two other brothers, Michael and Robert. As a restless entrepreneur and avid cannabis champion, Mr. Lee learned to strike a balance in life. 'You've got to be a hard, cold Republican in business,' he said. 'But sometimes, even in business, it's good to just mellow out.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in

Toronto-area pharmacist David Do was a key person behind MrDeepFakes.com, according to an investigation by CBC's Visual Investigation Unit, in collaboration with Bellingcat and the Danish publications Politiken and Tjekdet.

Yahoo

13-08-2025

Yahoo

Toronto-area pharmacist David Do was a key person behind MrDeepFakes.com, according to an investigation by CBC's Visual Investigation Unit, in collaboration with Bellingcat and the Danish publications Politiken and Tjekdet.

Politicians from a second European country are calling for the extradition of the Canadian man behind a notorious, pornographic website which featured deepfake images and videos of celebrities, politicians and private citizens. Members of three Dutch political parties — the VVD, GroenLinks-PvdA and BoerBurgerBewegin (BBB) — are planning to submit a written request to have David Do extradited for his involvement in the MrDeepFakes website, Dutch newspaper AD first reported. "People like this need to be punished … they have no idea what harm they are doing," Caroline van der Plas, leader of the BBB, told CBC News. In May, CBC's Visual Investigation Unit — in collaboration with the open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat and the Danish publications Politiken and Tjekdet — revealed that Do, a pharmacist who then worked for the Oak Valley Health network in the Toronto area, was a key person behind The website was shut down on May 4 after CBC News and its media partners told Do that it would be naming him and revealing his role in the enterprise. Van der Plas was among the dozens of Dutch celebrities and politicians of which non-consensual deepfake images and videos were posted on MrDeepfakes. "For me it feels like you're digitally raped," said Van der Plas. "A lot of people would know it's deepfake but a lot of people are also ignorant… And maybe they think it is real. It's horrible." In the Netherlands, it is illegal to create, possess or distribute deepfake porn. "[Our justice minister] promised me that he was going to take action to see if Mr. Do can be extradited," she said. In May, Danish MP Søren Søndergaard asked his country's justice minister for Do's extradition. The MrDeepFakes site also had victims from Denmark. Canada has extradition treaties with both countries, which state it can agree to extradite someone if their alleged act is a crime both here and in the requesting country. Deepfake porn is not specifically outlawed in Canada as of yet, but it's possible Do could be extradited on the basis that he may have violated existing harassment or defamation laws. Do has not been charged with a crime in Canada. He has not responded to calls for comment. WATCH | CBC investigates MrDeepFakes: Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged during the spring's election campaign that he would work to have the production of non-consensual pornographic deepfakes criminalized. The Department of Justice would not say whether it has had conversations with either the Netherlands or Denmark on an extradition. "Extradition requests are confidential state-to-state communications," it said in a statement. A spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office told CBC News in May that passing a law criminalizing non-consensual deepfakes is a priority. "Our government will protect the victims of sexual violence," the spokesperson said. "It will also increase penalties for the distribution of intimate images without consent and sexual assault on summary conviction." At its peak, MrDeepFakes, had more than 650,000 registered users, and featured videos of Canadians such as Michael Bublé, Justin Trudeau and Avril Lavigne. The content had drawn more than two billion views since its inception in 2018. Do was fired from his job at Oak Valley Health as an in-patient pharmacist at Markham Stouffville Hospital and Uxbridge Hospital in mid-May. The Ontario College of Pharmacists says it is investigating Do's alleged conduct, but would not provide additional details due to confidentiality.

Dutch politicians join calls to extradite Canadian behind notorious AI porn site