Never one to pass up a televised appearance, Donald Trump announced this week he’ll still do the CNN debate, even if they don’t pay him $5 million for the privilege.

A Philadelphia police officer has been suspended after pulling over a driver and threatening to impound his car unless he and his friend purchased tickets to a police benefit. The men in the car caught the shakedown on video, along with the officer dropping some casual homophobic slurs before he let them go.

Three members of a Michigan family have been indicted for allegedly extorting a retired software executive to the tune of nearly $3 million over four years. Prosecutors say the man at the center of the conspiracy was threatening to reveal that his stripper daughter and her teenage cousin had been involved in a paid threesome with the millionaire victim.

New York prosecutors have filed usury charges against a dozen payday loan companies offering interest rates "between 350 and 650 percent." The payday loan industry is run exclusively by bad people who will go to hell.

Prosecutors say that a New York police officer conspired with the brother of one of Albania's most wanted criminals to convince business owners in Queens to pay them monthly protection payments. The shining beacon of New York's finest is also accused of stalking his former mistress.

An Elmo street performer—known for spewing hate speech, shouting anti-Semitic diatribes, and generally terrorizing small children who know that Elmo the kindest of souls—just went about attacking a new group of kids. The detestable street creature, whose name is Dan Sandler, was yanked back into a courtroom for allegedly attempting to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts of America.

Tired of giving businesses five stars on Yelp and TripAdvisor without getting anything back?

Daniel Salinas, a mayoral candidate in Sunland Park, N.M., beat out two others in Tuesday night's election despite the fact that he is been banned from City Hall amid a lap-dancing extortion controversy:

For years upon years, we here at Gawker have been bringing you stories of the sheer fuckery of incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian (pictured), head of 5WPR, the most shameless public relations firm in New York City. Here is a bit of news that we view with exceeding interest: Ronn Torossian is caught up in a federal investigation. A very serious one.

Luis Mijangos, a computer programmer from Souther California, was sentenced to six years in prison last week for hacking into several women's computers, finding explicit photos and videos, and using them to demand more.

Actor Charlie Sheen is suing porn star Capri Anderson for extortion, claiming that she demanded a million dollars in exchange for keeping quiet about his probation violations. He also says she stole his $165,000 Patek Philippe watch. True love!

Charging for carry-ons and soft drinks is paying off: Airlines are set to profit $9 billion this year.

In an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Joran Van der Sloot says he extorted money from missing teen Natalee Holloway's parents for the location of their daughter's body, because they "have been making my life tough for five years."

Oksana Grigorieva is being investigated for potentially extorting Mel Gibson with recordings of his racist rantings. No other details have emerged. But how could you extort someone using things that are literally priceless? [NYDN, photo via Getty]

Actor John Stamos tried to perform oral sex on a 17-year-old girl after plying her with cocaine delivered by strippers, according to the girl, who is now on trial for attempting to extort Stamos out of $680,000. Have mercy!

Robert Halderman, the CBS producer who blackmailed David Letterman, was sentenced to six months today.

A California man has been indicted for "cyber extortion" after he launched a website and threatened to use his social network connections to embarrass New York Life Insurance unless the company refunded his premiums.

Yelp has surrendered. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman announced his local-reviews site will stop selling merchants the ability to select "favorite reviews," which push negative feedback further down profile pages. So now how will Yelp make money?

Welcome to the ultimate distillation of all the most evil social networking practices to have emerged over the past couple of years: Unvarnished, a website where complete strangers can set up your "profile" and mock you before potential employers.

The last thing Yelp needs right now is a public imbroglio with an upset internet luminary. But the local-reviews website sure has one, on top of many new lawsuits from merchants and an embarrassing tiff with Google.