He was looking to make some dough off Paula Deen, but he bit off more than he could chew.
The FBI busted Thomas Paculis in upstate New York on Friday on charges he tried to extort Deen, the scandal-scarred former Food Network superstar — for $250,000.
Paculis, 62, cooked his own goose when he emailed Deen’s lawyer and demanded cash in exchange for keeping quiet about “true and damning” statements involving the television icon “using the N-word in her business practices,” according to court papers.
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Deen, 66, was booted from Food Network and lost endorsement deals in June after admitting she had “of course” used the N-word at one point in the past but not for “a very long time.”
The butter-loving kitchen queen made the confession during a deposition for a civil lawsuit filed in 2012 by a former restaurant employee, Lisa Jackson.
“I am about to go public with statements refuting your (client’s) statements about using the ‘N’ word in her business practices at Lady and Son’s,” Paculis wrote June 24, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Savannah, Ga.
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