According to court documents that were unsealed this morning, Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu was the victim of an extortion plot carried out by one of his distant family members. The documents describe repeated threats made by Geourvon Sears to release allegedly damaging information about Mathieu unless Mathieu agreed to pay him millions of dollars.
A criminal complaint was filed against Sears in federal court in the Eastern district of Louisiana. In the complaint, a task force officer with the New Orleans Police Department who was assigned to the FBI, lays out the particulars of Sears’s alleged extortion plot.
The documents say that Mathieu, who is described only as “TM” in the complaint, reached out to authorities on April 24, 2019 and told them that a few days earlier Sears had begun calling Mathieu and demanding $1.5 million. Mathieu eventually blocked Sears’s number on his phone, at which point Sears allegedly began calling Mathieu’s friends and associates to make similar demands.
The complaint says that on April 23, 2019, Sears sent a group text message to two of Mathieu’s associates at 1:57 a.m. that read, “5 MILLION BY FRIDAY IM DONE TALKING EMAILING TMZ NOW.” Sears then went on to send a voice memo to the group, in which he stated, “I want 1.5 million by Friday or I am going to kill all you all.”
During that same week, Sears is alleged to have called Mathieu’s agent, at which point he claimed that if the money he had requested was not transferred into his bank account, he would go to media outlets and tell them that Mathieu had committed some sort of sexual misconduct.
When reached for comment by WDSU, Mathieu’s agent sent along the following statement:
“He’s dealing with a family member who is dealing with a mental health issue,” said Denise White, EAG Sports Representative of Mathieu. “Tyrann is fine. His family is fine. They are getting through.”
Sears is currently out on $25,000 bond and being held on house arrest. His first court appearance is scheduled for June 21. The full criminal complaint can be read below: