Comedian Carrot Top was allegedly being extorted over a sexually explicit video by a musician who once opened for him, a demand that came just days before the Las Vegas fixture was hospitalized following an apparent suicide attempt.
Court filings obtained by Page Six show that attorney Ronnie Bitman, representing Carrot Top, whose real name is Scott Thompson, filed documents in Broward County, Florida, on September 3 alleging that musician Brian Evans demanded $500,000 "in immediately available funds" to make the threat go away. Evans, who previously performed as Thompson's opening act in Las Vegas, allegedly warned that without immediate payment, a sexually explicit recording of the comedian would be filed in a public court docket "so that it may be obtained and disseminated by the press and other parties," Breitbart News reported.
The filing included an email Evans sent to Bitman stating the video was stored on a USB drive. Evans set a deadline and told the attorney the offer was one Carrot Top "will never see again, not even remotely close."
Days later, on a Friday evening, Thompson was rushed to a Las Vegas hospital after what the New York Post described as an attempted suicide. His Friday and Saturday performances at the Luxor Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, where the 61-year-old comedian has held a long-running residency, were canceled. Thompson had reportedly been seen at a Las Vegas bar around 2 p.m. that afternoon, hours before his scheduled 8 p.m. show.
The extortion allegation is only one thread in what court records describe as a sprawling pattern of litigation by Evans. A federal court order issued September 4 by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida found that Evans had filed "no fewer than fifteen pro se cases in this District since 2025, all of which appear frivolous." Pro se means Evans represented himself without an attorney.
Judge Shari Africk Olefson ruled that Evans had wrongly labeled his filings as emergencies when they did not meet the court's requirements for that designation. In her order, the judge was direct:
"The court finds such non-compliance to constitute an abuse of the emergency motion procedure."
Judge Olefson granted Carrot Top's request to remove or seal materials Evans had filed in the case, including videos, text messages, and other items that Thompson's attorneys called irrelevant. Evans also filed a separate motion asking the judge in a case against Carrot Top to be recused.
Jami Schlicher, Thompson's representative, told Page Six that Evans has been declared a "vexatious litigant" and that a judge described his court filings as "serial" and "spurious." The specific court that issued the vexatious-litigant designation was not identified in available filings.
Evans pushed back on the extortion characterization in statements to Page Six. He insisted his email to Bitman was "intended to be confidential" and denied threatening to post any video in exchange for a settlement:
"It is not a threat. I am not offering to create coverage, stop coverage, or trade silence for money. I cannot control what outlets write after a public motion is filed. The only thing that stops coverage is if we both stop filing anything."
Evans also told Page Six that he "never threatened, ever, to post any video anywhere in exchange for a settlement" and that the video in question "was deleted a long time ago" in compliance with a previous settlement. He claimed Carrot Top had sent him an unsolicited sexually explicit video of himself in 2022 or 2023.
Beyond the video dispute, Evans is trying to void a 2024 settlement he signed with Thompson. His argument: the 2023 Maui wildfires caused him "severe psychiatric injuries" that left him unable to enter the agreement with full capacity. No independent evidence supporting that claim appeared in the court records.
Schlicher confirmed Thompson's hospitalization and issued a statement asking for space. "Mr. Thompson is recovering in the hospital and is receiving the care and support he needs," she said. "His family and those closest to him are deeply grateful for the concern, prayers and respectfully ask for privacy."
MGM Resorts, which operates the Luxor where Thompson has performed for decades, also responded. "Scott is a beloved member of the Luxor and MGM Resorts family, and we are relieved to hear that he is recovering," a company spokesperson told Fox News.
Evans, for his part, offered condolences of a sort. "I am sorry that Scott apparently did something to hurt himself. He's a great talent but these are issues he needs to deal with and move past," he told Page Six. He added: "Scott is still young and has a big life ahead of him. It's not my intent to bring this guy down. It's the opposite. Thankfully he is still with us."
Several questions remain unanswered. Whether law enforcement has been contacted about the alleged extortion is unclear. The current status of the Broward County case and whether the USB drive video was ever actually filed on a public docket are not addressed in the available court records. And Thompson himself has not spoken publicly about either the extortion allegation or his hospitalization.
What the court filings do show is a pattern: a man who filed at least fifteen lawsuits a federal judge called frivolous, who demanded a half-million dollars from a comedian under threat of public humiliation, and who now faces a judicial record that speaks for itself. A federal judge sealed the materials, called the filings an abuse of procedure, and moved to protect the target.
The courts did their job. Whether anyone else with authority over this situation does theirs is the question that matters now.
