Ono Driver Gets Ticket to Ride

03/15/2007 1:10 PM, E! Online
Josh Grossberg

It's just like starting over for Yoko Ono's ex-chauffeur.

A federal immigration judge ruled on Wednesday that Koral Karsan, the former driver accused of trying to blackmail Yoko Ono, can leave the United States on his own accord and return to his native Turkey instead of facing deportation.

Judge Alan A. Vomacka signed an order declaring that Karsan must be out of the U.S. by Apr. 13, otherwise immigration officials with the Department of Homeland Security can boot him out for being in the country illegally.

Karsan's immigration attorney, Jonathan Avirom, told the court that his client had a plane ticket to Turkey for Mar. 23. HIs voluntary exodus would make it much easier for the 50-year-old driver to re-enter the U.S. whereas as a deportee, he would face procedural difficulties.

The former driver, who worked for Ono for at least six years, pleaded guilty last month to third-degree grand larceny. He was originally accused of trying to extort $2 million from her in December. In a letter delivered to Ono just days before on the 26th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, Karsan threatened to make public a trove of Ono's recordings, emails and conversations unless she came up with the cash. Karsan also claimed to have a team "on standby waiting to kill her on his orders," and if she didn't meet his demands, he would flee to Turkey and write a tell-all book about her.

In a jailhouse interview with the New York Daily News, Karsan claimed that Ono orchestrated the case against him to preempt his filing a sexual-harassment suit.

His attorney, Robert Gottlieb, also told reporters that Karsan was a victim of sexual harassment and other mistreatment at the hands of the 74-year-old Ono and had merely demanded reimbursement from her, not hush money.

Although prosecutors insisted they had all the evidence needed to obtain a conviction and a prison term up to 15 years, they agreed to accept a plea bargain, ostensibly to protect Ono and her family's privacy.

Ultimately, Karsan pleaded guilty Feb. 16 to the lesser charge of grand larceny and admitted to threatening to embarrass Ono unless she paid him "more than $3,000." He was sentenced to 60 days of time served and handed over to federal immigration officials for potential deportation.

With Karsan out of the way, Ono's legal crew has been focusing another campaign.

Ono's lawyers forced the cancellation of last week's world premiere of Three Days in the Life, a film featuring two hours of previously unseen footage of Lennon, scheduled to show for free at Berwick Academy, a private school in Southern Maine. Ono said the producers never received her permission to hold a screening, even a free one, because Ono owns all the rights, titles and copyrights to the black-and-white footage, which was shot by her first husband, Anthony Cox, in 1970.