A federal indictment has been unsealed charging Maryland State Senator Dalya Attar, her brother, and a Baltimore police officer with eight counts including extortion, conspiracy and unlawful interception of communications. Prosecutors allege that between 2020 and 2022, the group covertly installed recording devices in an apartment used by a former campaign consultant and a married individual, capturing intimate footage that was then used to threaten the consultant into silence during Attar’s 2022 House re-election bid.
The alleged scheme involved hidden cameras placed inside a smoke detector, a vehicle tracker placed on the consultant’s car, and multiple WhatsApp messages discussing the captured material. According to the indictment, one message read: “I already have all her daughters’ phone numbers … I’ll share these videos with every shadchan in Israel,” in a threat aimed at the consultant’s daughters’ matrimonial prospects unless she refrained from criticizing Attar.
Senator Attar—who made history earlier this year as the first Orthodox Jewish woman elected to the Maryland Senate—told reporters she “look[s] forward to sharing [her] side of the story” and dismissed the allegations as rooted in a “disgruntled former employee.” If convicted on all counts, she and her co-defendants face up to 20 years in prison.