Dalya Attar made history in January as the first Orthodox Jewish woman to serve in the Maryland Senate.
Federal authorities in the U.S. have indicted a Democratic state senator from Maryland on extortion charges, accusing her of orchestrating a blackmail plot that involved covertly recorded explicit videos, as revealed by an indictment unsealed Thursday.
Attar, who secured her initial election to the Maryland House of Delegates in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022, advanced to become the Maryland State Senate’s first Orthodox Jewish woman member earlier this year.
According to court filings, Attar is accused of hatching a scheme to prevent a former staffer from publicly criticizing her 2022 re-election campaign. Prosecutors contend she colluded with her brother, Joseph Attar, and Baltimore police officer Kalman Finkelstein, a former member of her campaign team.
Beginning in 2020, they allegedly sought to silence the former employee by leveraging surreptitiously filmed videos of her engaged in sexual activity with a married man, as detailed in court documents. WhatsApp communications cited in the case reveal Attar’s stated desire for the former consultant to be “a nonissue in my mind.”
Attar was quoted as remarking, “Two years later [she] is still looking to screw me badly… even more reason why the lady should be afraid to come out with anything at any point.”
Court documents further indicated that the group allegedly collaborated to monitor the former consultant’s whereabouts using a tracking device on a vehicle she was lent. They also reportedly obtained intimate videos of her and her lover by setting up cameras disguised as smoke detectors. At the time, the victim resided in an apartment belonging to Finkelstein’s family.
The indictment states that Joseph Attar subsequently contacted the former consultant’s lover, allegedly threatening to release the video and demanding that she “stay out of this election.”
All three individuals are facing charges including extortion, wiretapping, and various other offenses. If found guilty on all counts, they could each be sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison.