Three arrested in scheme to threaten, bribe alleged victims of R. Kelly

One man allegedly discussed paying a victim $500,000 to keep her from cooperating with the feds. Another threatened to reveal sexual photos of a victim, the feds say.

Federal prosecutors in New York say they have charged three men in separate schemes to harass, intimidate and bribe the alleged victims of R&B singer R. Kelly, who faces charges there and in Chicago.

Criminal complaints have been unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charging Richard Arline Jr., 31, Donnell Russell, 45, and Michael Williams, 37, in the schemes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn. The feds said all three have ties to Kelly.

Arline was arrested in his hometown of Dolton and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Young Kim in Chicago, prosecutors said. They described him as “a self-proclaimed longtime friend of Kelly.” His scheme allegedly involved discussing a $500,000 payment to a victim to keep her from cooperating with the government, according to the feds.

During a recorded phone call, Arline allegedly claimed he had been in touch with Kelly while Kelly was behind bars via a three-way call with another person.

Arline allegedly said, “If I had a way to talk to Rob (Kelly), being next to him and telling him what’s going on, without nobody listening to, no feds, nobody, he gonna pay her . . . off to be quiet,” adding she “got too much. She got too much.”

Russell, of Chicago, is accused of harassing and intimidating an alleged Kelly victim after she filed a lawsuit against Kelly. The feds called him “a self-described manager, advisor and friend of Kelly.” They say he threatened to reveal sexually explicit photos of her and to publicly reveal her sexual history if she did not end her lawsuit. Using an alias, he also allegedly created a Facebook page called “Surviving Lies” — a play on the title of the documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly” — and posted screen shots of text messages between Kelly and the victim.

Williams, of Georgia, is separately accused of setting fire in June to an SUV parked outside a Florida home where an alleged Kelly victim and others had been staying. He is described as “a relative of an individual who once served as a publicist for Kelly.”

Kelly is charged with child pornography and obstruction of justice in a federal indictment in Chicago, and he faces a separate federal racketeering indictment in Brooklyn. For more than a year, he has been held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. His legal team repeatedly sought to have him freed this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. They are now challenging his detention before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

However, prosecutors have repeatedly suggested Kelly might try to interfere with the case against him. Early this year, they said a prison staff member gave Kelly permission to use a telephone to contact a third party — a call that “was not recorded and obviously circumvented the protocols in place to ensure monitoring of the defendant’s communications.”

Kelly’s lawyers have said he “simply has no means or method by which to engage in any obstructive conduct.”