An Arizona woman who claimed former MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer sexually assaulted her has been charged with extorting him.
Darcy Esemonu has been indicted by a grand jury for fraudulent schemes and theft by extortion, both felonies, ESPN reported. She is scheduled for arraignment on April 26 in Maricopa County.
Esemonu “knowingly did obtain a benefit from … Trevor Anthony Bauer by means of fraudulent pretenses, representation, promises, or material omissions,” the indictment against her says. She also “knowingly did obtain or sought to obtain property or services … by means of a threat to in the future expose a secret or an asserted fact in a social media message or in any other manner” involving a second man, who is not associated with Bauer.
In 2022, Esemonu filed a lawsuit against Bauer, claiming he sexually assaulted her in 2020 and that she had become pregnant from the encounter. She later updated that lawsuit in 2023. Bauer countersued, saying his encounter with Esemonu “was consensual” and alleging that she tried to harass and extort money from him after he was accused of sexual assault by several other women.
Bauer’s attorneys told ESPN that Esemonu demanded $3.6 million from Bauer, claiming he “forced her to have an abortion.” When he refused to pay her the money, “she made up a bogus sexual assault claim and filed a civil suit against” Bauer.
Esemonu reported the alleged sexual assault to police a week after she filed her lawsuit. Police reports obtained by ESPN show that Esemonu “initially stated she had a miscarriage, but later referred to the miscarriage as an abortion” when talking to police. Later, she told police there was no abortion but that she miscarried just before heading to a clinic in a different state. A police detective noted in the reports that none of the medical records Esemonu provided indicated that she “was in fact pregnant.”
In January 2023, Bauer’s attorney, Anne Chapman, filed a criminal complaint with the Scottsdale Police Department – the same police department where Esemonu made her allegations – and said the woman “had demanded financial compensation from her client for a pregnancy and abortion that was alleged to be false.”
Bauer was also accused of sexual assault by Lindsey Hill, who also claimed the former star pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers beat her.
He never faced charges relating to the allegations, and a restraining order filed by Hill was denied. Bauer always maintained that the rough sex between him and Hill was consensual.
Once the settlement was announced, Bauer released a video revealing some of the text messages Hill had sent to her friends prior to meeting Bauer and after their encounter, which suggests she had always been focused on getting money from him.
“’Next victim. Star pitcher for the Dodgers,’” Bauer begins in the video with a picture of Hill’s text. “A text Lindsey Hill sent to a friend before she ever even met me. ‘What should I steal?’ she asked another, in reference to visiting my house for the first time. The answer? ‘Take his money.’ So how might that work? ‘I’m going to his house Wednesday.’ she said, ‘I already have my hooks in. You know how I roll.’ Then, after the first time we met, “Net worth is 51 mil” she said. ‘b—h, you better secure the bag’, was the response.”
“But how was she going to do that?” Bauer continued. “‘Need daddy to choke me out,’ she said. ‘being an absolute whore to try to get in on his 51 million,’ read another text. Then, after the second time we met, former [San Diego] Padres pitcher Jacob Nix told her ‘you gotta get this bag.’ ‘I’ll give you 50,000’ Lindsey replied. Her AA sponsor asked her at one point, ‘do you feel a tiny bit guilty?’ ‘Not really,’ she replied.”
Bauer said these messages were “deliberately and unlawfully concealed from me and my legal team” until he filed his lawsuit against Hill and the case entered discovery.
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He also played a video taken just minutes before Hill left Bauer’s house in the morning after the alleged assault, showing her in bed next to him smirking at the camera with no evidence of injury or distress.
He said Hill’s legal team had approached him for money, but after this evidence was turned over, they approached with a settlement offer that included no money. He agreed to a settlement that allowed him to publicly discuss the case since he could not do so for legal reasons prior.
Bauer was suspended for 324 games because of the allegations, but an independent arbitrator reduced that ban to 194 games in December, Fox reported. No team picked him up, so he began playing in Japan for the Yokohama DeNa Baystars, where he was 10-4 with a 2.76 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 19 games.