Pacman Forced To Make It Rain, Extortion Style

Details regarding the Las Vegas strip club shooting that Adam "Pacman" Jones may or may not have been involved in keep coming out, and the newest report is intriguing.

Apparently, Jones ended up paying the accused shooter $15,000 to keep him from attacking his daughter, mother and Jones himself.

Police alleged in the documents that one of the go-betweens told Jones that if he refused to pay, the accused shooter would “go after Jones, his mother and daughter.”

A childhood friend also contacted Jones, urging him to pay the money, the document said.

In April and early May, Jones had a friend wire $3,800 to a woman in Seattle. He put up $11,200 more for a friend in Atlanta to pay “in his behalf,” police said.

Throughout the warrant declaration police repeatedly refer to extortion and “extortion monies,” and say Jones told investigators he withdrew $10,000 from a bank account in Atlanta to pay his friend “for paying the extortion money in his behalf.”

At first glance, the situation just comes across as a wealthy person who got mixed up in some trouble and bought their way out of it to an extent. However, after reading through the article I have a few questions/observations about it.

-Did Jones pay the money because he was directly involved with the shooting? He was able to have his charges reduced to "conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct" last December, and never acknowledged any involvement with the shooting. But maybe he was more involved than the authorities realized.

-Was Jones trying to put an end to the trouble? Was he scared? Was it a little of both? I would imagine that if you're paying $15k in extortion money, then you're either scared of a secret getting out, scared of the person extorting you or a little of both. So, what was the case for Pacman? I'm guessing that he probably has some "friends" who could just as easily scare the guy extorting him, but maybe this guy is more dangerous than we realize. I guess it also could have just been a case of Pacman wanting any and all legal woes to disappear so that he could resume his NFL career.

-Did the extortion payments lead the police to the suspected shooter? According to the article, there haven't been any details provided as to how the police caught up with the alleged shooter, Arvin Kenti Edwards. However, if Pacman agreed to cooperate with the authorities as part of his plea deal, then I'm sure they were able to track down exactly who was extorting Jones and where that person lived.

All in all, it's a new development in the case, and it will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. It will also be interesting to see if it has any bearing on Commissioner Goodell's decision of whether to reinstate Jones or not.