Culture

Teamsters Not Guilty In 'Top Chef' Extortion Trial

Padma Lakshmi Shutterstock
Lily Rose|

A federal jury has rendered a not guilty verdict for the Boston-area Teamsters accused of conspiracy to extort and attempted extortion of the Top Chef cast and crew, including star Padma Lakshmi, three years ago.

Despite testimony from the Top Chef host, Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, and producers of the show saying that the men physically threatened them and used racial and sexist slurs against them, the four men were found not guilty.

The jurors ruled in favor of Daniel Redmond, 49; John Fidler, 53; Robert Cafarelli, 47; and Michael Ross, 63, even though The Boston Globe reported that prosecutors called 18 witnesses to the stand, and many of them confirmed that the men had cursed at female producers, threatened to beat up crew members, and tried to stop production by blocking a delivery truck during their alleged protest.

A video was also shown of one of the men calling a producer (who happened to be a woman of color), a "towel head", as well as a handful of sexist expletives.

The Teamsters dodged the guilty verdict after the jury agreed with the defense argument that the protests had been legal under a federal law that allows union members to picket if they are in pursuit of a job, the Boston Herald reported.

If Redmond, Fidler, Cafarelli, and Ross had been found guilty, each man could have served a maximum 20-year sentence.

On Twitter, Lakshmi retweeted kind words sent to her from various sources about the surprise ruling, including an apology from Boston City Councilman Tito Jackson.

This isn't the only time Top Chef has encountered controversey related to one of its locations. The premiere of the show's fourteenth season was filmed on a seventeenth-century plantation, spurring widespread criticism.

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