Federal Inquiry Into Weinstein Expanded to Include Stalking

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan investigating possible financial improprieties by the disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein have broadened their inquiry to include allegations that he may have violated federal stalking laws, several people with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.

The expansion of the inquiry, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, added to the legal risks facing Weinstein. For several months, local prosecutors in Manhattan and Los Angeles, and the police in London, have been investigating accusations that he sexually assaulted numerous women; none of those investigations have led to criminal charges. Weinstein has also been accused in several civil lawsuits of sexual and physical assault and of waging smear campaigns against his accusers.

The federal investigation started late last year when prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan began to examine whether Weinstein had committed fraud when he arranged for two auction items — a sitting with a famous fashion photographer and a package of tickets to a Hollywood awards event and party — to be offered together at an AIDS charity fundraiser in France in May 2015. There was one condition to the deal, said people with knowledge of the matter: $600,000 of the proceeds had to go to a theater staging a Broadway musical Weinstein was producing.

According to the people familiar with the case, that investigation, which is being handled by the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit of the Manhattan federal prosecutors’ office, quickly expanded to include the possibility that Weinstein broke federal stalking laws in his dealings with women who have accused him of sexual assault. Those laws forbid crossing state lines to kill, injure, harass or intimidate victims.

What specific conduct is under scrutiny by federal investigators was not disclosed by the people who confirmed the expanded inquiry. Under federal stalking statutes, prosecutors do not need to prove that a sex crime was committed to win a conviction.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said Wednesday that he had met with federal prosecutors in what he called “an attempt to dissuade them from proceeding” with the inquiry. Brafman added that he would have more meetings with the prosecutors in the weeks to come and he said Weinstein had not committed any crimes.

“Mr. Weinstein has always maintained that he has never engaged in nonconsensual acts,” Brafman said.

As part of their investigation, federal agents have traveled to London and Los Angeles to interview witnesses, including women who say they were abused by Weinstein, the people with knowledge of the case said. The agents were in California in late April and early May, the people said, at the same time that investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office were also there conducting interviews for their own investigation.

After presiding as a king in Hollywood for decades, Weinstein’s reputation was shattered in October when The New York Times and The New Yorker published articles containing the accounts of several women — movie stars and former employees of The Weinstein Co. among them — who claimed that Weinstein had sexually abused and assaulted them, then paid or coerced them to be silent. The articles ignited a wave of public outrage that renewed attempts to bring Weinstein to justice.

The expansion of the federal inquiry in Manhattan does not mean that the local ones have ended. The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is continuing its investigation into a sexual assault allegation by actress Paz de la Huerta, who alleges Weinstein raped her twice in her apartment in late 2010. Prosecutors in his office are also looking into an accusation, first reported in The New Yorker, that Weinstein forced a student actress, Lucia Evans, to perform oral sex on him during a business meeting at his office in 2004.

Vance’s assistants have been investigating not only the complaints of women who say Weinstein forced them to have sex with him, but also the possibility he misused company funds to pay hush money to his accusers or to intimidate them in other ways, several people with knowledge of the investigation said.

“Our investigation is in an advanced stage,” Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance, said on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on the federal investigation.

Weinstein is also confronting considerable pressure from civil suits. In February, the New York attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against him and his brother Robert, alleging they had repeatedly violated state and city laws barring gender discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual abuse and coercion.