Michael Jackson’s estate is ratcheting up allegations that a recent child abuse accuser fabricated his claims for a payday by filing court papers identifying the man as a music manager who expressly disclaimed that the King of Pop was a pedophile in the 2011 memoir My Friend Michael.
In a petition to compel arbitration submitted to Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday (July 9) and obtained by Billboard, the Jackson estate identifies Frank Cascio as the man behind an alleged $213 million extortion attempt reported last fall. Articles at the time said the estate had brought an arbitration demand against an accuser, at that point anonymous, who was trying to secure a financial windfall despite inking a binding settlement years earlier.
Filling in some gaps in that account, Wednesday’s petition says Cascio launched a “shakedown” of the Jackson estate when the HBO docuseries Leaving Neverland amplified years of child sexual abuse claims against the deceased pop superstar in 2019. According to the estate, Cascio and his associates “decided it was their turn to profit from making specious accusations against their dear friend” despite having been staunch defenders of Jackson for more than 30 years.
The petition says that Cascio, who had known Jackson since he was a child and worked as the singer’s manager, spent years “passionately” proclaiming Jackson’s innocence in interviews with ABC’s Primetime Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Wendy Williams Show. Cascio also disclaimed the swirling abuse claims in My Friend Michael.
“Frank’s book adamantly confirmed that he could state ‘with the absolute conviction of a man who saw Michael interact with thousands of kids’ that ‘in all the years that I was close to him, I saw nothing that raised any red flags,’” says the petition. “Frank stated unequivocally, ‘I want to be precise and clear, on the record, so that everyone can read and understand: Michael’s love for children was innocent, and it was profoundly misunderstood.’”
As the petition puts it, Jackson’s estate “reluctantly” agreed to pay Cascio a settlement in 2020 — which previous reporting has tallied at $3.3 million — without admitting any wrongdoing and in exchange for a promise that any future disputes would be decided in confidential arbitration. But Cascio allegedly violated that agreement last year by threatening to file a public lawsuit unless he and his associates were paid $213 million more.
Those alleged threats led the Jackson estate to bring a private arbitration demand for extortion, which remains pending before the mediation firm Signature Resolution. Now, the estate says Cascio’s newly retained celebrity attorney, Mark Geragos, is once again threatening to bring a public lawsuit unless they satisfy a fresh demand of $44 million.
“In order to enforce their rights under the agreement, petitioners hereby seek an order compelling respondents to resolve any and all of their specious alleged claims against petitioners and any attorneys who represented petitioners in the pending arbitration before Signature Resolution in accordance with the express provisions of the agreement,” the Wednesday petition reads.
Geragos did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
Jackson, who died suddenly in 2009, was never convicted or held legally liable on any accusation of child molestation. But he’s still dogged by such allegations: Two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, are continuing to pursue civil lawsuits alleging Jackson sexually abused them as children, and they laid out the accusations in disturbing detail in Leaving Neverland.
The Jackson estate has always vehemently denied all such claims, pointing out that the singer was acquitted in a 2005 criminal trial. The estate has generated more than $3 billion since Jackson’s death, and it maintains that his accusers are simply seeking to profit off an artist who cannot defend himself because defamation law does not extend to dead individuals.
The estate calls Leaving Neverland a “one-sided hit job” and sued HBO over the series in 2019. That case has since settled confidentially, and Leaving Neverland is no longer available on HBO’s streaming platforms.
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