A street performer, who was previously arrested for an anti-Semitic tirade while wearing an Elmo costume, was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in jail for attempting to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts.
Dan Sandler, 49, called his actions which included "alarming" and "bizarre" emails a protest against the Girl Scouts' ties to the pharmaceutical industry, according to the New York Daily News.
"This was not a case of someone in the back room or front office trying to embezzle. This was more of a protest, like lying in an intersection," Sander told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Robert Stoltz.
In Sandler's earlier arrest, he blocked traffic at W. 44th Street and Broadway while shouting, "The Jews are responsible for everything that's wrong with the world! I hate the Jews!"
He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to community service.
Sandler, who said even before his most recent arrest, he protested the use of "off-label marketing"--using drugs for different reasons than they are approved for--of pharmaceutical products to children, called his actions a protest of the Scouts' engaging in that kind of activity for the industry.
"I am not in any way sorry to the Girl Scouts organization because I believe they are a very corrupt organization because of their relationship to the pharmaceutical industry," Sandler said.
The former Times Square Elmo was also arrested last May in San Francisco where he was living in a car and brought to New York on attempted grand larceny, aggravated harassment and stalking charges.
He began an incessant stream of communication with Girl Scouts staff in New York beginning in July 2012, according to the NY Daily News. Sandler did some temp work for the Scouts until 2008. He has told staff that he would falsely accuse the organization in public of arranging sex between men and young girls at their camps.
Part of his sentencing deal is that he has to stay away from the Girl Scout officials whom he targeted in his most recent emails.
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