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TMZ blackmailed Justin Bieber, paid $100G for Ray Rice vid
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TMZ blackmailed Justin Bieber, paid $100G for Ray Rice vid

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Justin Bieber was reportedly at the center of a blackmail scandal involving a reworking of his "One Less Lonely Girl" song. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Justin Bieber was reportedly at the center of a blackmail scandal involving a reworking of his “One Less Lonely Girl” song. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

TMZ has pumped millions of dollars into a massive network of paid informants ranging from airline and limousine service employees to lawyers and agents — and even resorted to blackmail in its quest to churn out a steady stream of Hollywood gossip, according to a bombshell New Yorker exposé.

The 2014 elevator altercation between Solange Knowles and Jay Z, Mel Gibson’s alcohol-fueled rant during a 2006 police stop and ex-Baltimore Ravens runningback Ray Rice’s attack on then-fiancée Janay Palmer  — for which the site paid a whopping $105,000 for surveillance videos — were among a slew of scoops obtained by the gossip site thanks to hefty backdoor bribes, according to the 11,000-word New Yorker piece.

THE ALL-DEGENERATE NFL TEAM

But perhaps even more shocking are allegations that the site, launched by lawyer-turned-media-mogul Harvey Levin 10 years ago, engaged in blackmail, revealing that in 2011 it published numerous flattering exclusives about Justin Bieber in exchange for burying a damning video of the pop star blurting out the n-word and other racial slurs. 

Harvey Levin's TMZ empire is the subject of a New Yorker article on how the gossip site casts a wide net for celebrity news.Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images

Harvey Levin’s TMZ empire is the subject of a New Yorker article on how the gossip site casts a wide net for celebrity news.

“Harvey Levin would have been a great dictator,” Rory Waltzer, a former TMZ cameraman, told the magazine. “He is charming enough so that you want to follow him, but terrifying enough so that you don’t want to fail.”

The apparent blackmail of Bieber unfolded over days and weeks as Justin Kaplan, a former production associate for TMZ, flew from Burbank to the outskirts of Las Vegas with an envelope containing $80,000 in exchange for a video of the then-15-year-old pop star improvising his hit “One Less Lonely Girl,” substituting the n-word for the word ‘girl’ and giggling throughout the clip.

In Sin City, Kaplan wound up on the second floor of a seedy apartment building with a woman described as middle-aged and African-American — with no ties to the Canadian star. “She handed me a laptop, and a disk, and I gave her the check,” Kaplan told the magazine. “I got on the next flight back to Burbank.”

When Levin called Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, for comment shortly after procuring the video, Braun broke down in tears and Bieber crumbled, acknowledging immediately that he had made the video as a joke and that he thought he had deleted it from his laptop, which was later stolen. Levin never released the video and, soon after, a flood of exlusive pictures of the heartthrob flooded onto the site.

“After Braun and Levin had their phone conversation,” writes New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle, “numerous flattering Bieber-related exclusives appeared on the site: A photograph of Bieber backstage during a commerical shoot; pictures of him getting a haircut; a video of him and his girlfriend Selena Gomez performing karaoke; a story about how he bought ‘every single flower’ at a florist’s and sent the flowers to Gomez’s house; video from a trip that Bieber took to Liverpool; and others, including a report of him watching ‘Titanic’ one night, with Gomez, inside an otherwise vacant Staples Center.”

In the case of Rice, meanwhile, security guards at the Revel Hotel leaked and sold two videos of the running back punching out Palmer, a former employee of the Atlantic City hotel told the New Yorker. The first went for $15,000 while the second — which shows Rice delivering the punch — sold $90,000, a former TMZ photographer told the New Yorker.

AP PROVIDES ACCESS TO THIS HANDOUT PHOTO TO BE USED SOLELY TO ILLUSTRATE NEWS REPORTING OR COMMENTARY ON THE FACTS OF EVENTS DEPICTED IN THIS IMAGE. THIS IMAGE MY ONLY BE USED FOR 14 DAYS FROM TIME OF TRANSMISSION; NO ARCHIVING; NO LICENSING. STILL IMAGE TTMZ Sports via AP

TMZ reportedly paid Revel Hotel security guards more than $100,000 for two videos showing Ray Rice punching his then-fianceé Janay Palmer and dragging her out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator. 

Former HLN television journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell described Levin’s Rice revelations as “Watergate-esque.”

Monetary exchanges are apparently standard practice for TMZ’s photographers and some of their tipsters. A Delta Airlines employee supplies TMZ with a list of celebrity passengers jetting to and from Los Angeles, while a mole inside a private limousine service receives cash for providing a client list.

Neither Levin nor a TMZ publicist would comment on the article, which details their business tracking George Clooney, Chris Brown, Bieber, Gibson, Knowles and others.

Alec Baldwin still hates Levin, calling him a “festering boil on the anus of American media.” Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Alec Baldwin still hates Levin, calling him a “festering boil on the anus of American media.” 

A sex worker at Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch alerted TMZ to Lamar Odom’s near-death binge at a Nevada brothel in October 2015 while a first responder called TMZ within minutes of Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009.

Alec Baldwin, meanwhile, has been a repeat target of Levin’s tabloid practices.

The “30 Rock” actor recalled his longtime fantasy of ending Levin’s life after the site leaked a voicemail of Baldwin calling his then-11-year-old daughter Ireland a “rude, thoughtless little pig” in 2007.

“There was a time when my greatest wish was to stab Harvey Levin with a rusty implement and watch his entrails go running down my forearm,” the 57-year-old told the New Yorker.

Now, he thinks of Levin as a “festering boil on the anus of American media,” Baldwin added.

nhensley@nydailynews.com

Tags:
justin beiber ,
ray rice ,
lamar odom ,
alec baldwin ,
mel gibson ,
jay z ,
solange knowles ,
selena gomez ,
chris brown ,
george clooney ,
michael jackson ,
media

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