State Sen. Dalya Attar, her brother and a Baltimore Police officer face federal extortion and conspiracy charges as part of an alleged effort in which they tried to blackmail a political consultant from speaking out against Attar in the run-up to the 2022 election, according to a recently unsealed federal indictment.

The blackmail scheme involved illicitly tracking the consultant’s whereabouts, secretly filming her in bed with a married man and threatening to expose the video and interfere with matchmaking to find the consultant’s daughters a spouse.

Attar, a Democrat and former prosecutor, represents a Northwest Baltimore district, and was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2018. In 2025, Baltimore City Democratic Committee members chose Attar to fill a state Senate vacancy. Del. Malcolm Ruff announced in August he would challenge Attar.

The indictment alleges Attar conspired with her brother, Joseph Attar, and Kalman Finkelstein, the city police officer, to try and silence the consultant from sending out mailers or posting online about Attar’s voting record to fellow members of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Four unnamed co-conspirators are also listed in the indictment as having helped carry out the clandestine plot.

A spokesperson for Senate President Bill Ferguson said that the chamber “holds its members to the highest ethical standards” and “will continue to do so as we learn more about the alleged facts in the indictment.” A member of the General Assembly can be punished or expelled with a two-thirds vote.

In a statement, Dalya Attar said she would continue to serve her community and that she looked forward to when she could share her side of the story. She claimed that she had seen no “tangible evidence” that supports the charges against her.

“I ran for public office because of my strong belief in serving my community that I love, and I would never do anything to knowingly jeopardize my constituents’ trust in me,” the senator said.

A federal judge ordered all three defendants released from custody Thursday afternoon on the condition they surrender their passports. Dalya Attar’s attorney, A. Jeff Ifrah, said the senator planned to fight the charges; attorneys for the other defendants declined to comment.

A spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department said Finkelstein’s police powers have been suspended since 2022 and he has been placed on administrative duty.

The consultant at the center of the case, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, worked for Dalya Attar during the 2018 election, according to the indictment. The two had a disagreement — it’s unclear about what — and split ways.

From that point on, Dalya Attar was worried that the consultant was “looking to screw me badly,” which may have prompted the blackmail scheme. The scheme came to a head when Joseph Attar threatened the consultant and the married man, known in the indictment as “victim 2,″ with the release of the videos unless the consultant agreed to “leave Dalya alone,” according to the indictment.

It’s unclear if the video was ever released.

“I just want her [the consultant] to be non-issue in my mind and in reality that won’t happen as long as she is relevant or doesn’t have anything worry about,” Dalya Attar told one of the co-conspirators in a 2020 voice message sent on WhatsApp, according to the indictment.

The group communicated primarily on WhatsApp and were concerned about putting things in writing — early on Dalya Attar advised one group chat to “delete anything ... that you can” — but still exchanged a series of messages over two years about their efforts.

The blackmail scheme

It began in January of 2020, when the consultant was visiting the states and would be staying in an apartment that belonged to Finkelstein’s family. Joseph Attar, who goes by “Yossi,” and Finkelstein went into the apartment on Jan. 16, when the consultant was away and installed cameras disguised as smoke detectors, according to the indictment. They also placed a tracking device on the car the consultant was using.

Five days later Joseph Attar, who had been accessing the video feeds, found what they had been waiting for. “We have a visitor...” he wrote to the group on WhatsApp, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors don’t cite any messages between the group until March 11, 2021, when Dalya Attar sent a series of messages to “Co-Conspirator 1″ about how the consultant needed “to be warned” about the dirt they had collected. The then-delegate was presumably worried about political mailers “to the Jewish community” that would focus on her voting history over the previous three years.

“We’re nearing my election,” she wrote. “We can’t wait until she does it already. Things as simple as anti police things.”

Dalya Attar went on to write that the blackmail could be the “perfect way to scare her” in regards to “her daughters shidduchim” — or marriage matchmaking in the Orthodox Jewish community.

“We have a way that can potentially stop her. Why not at least try.”

That same day, Co-Conspirator 1 sent Dalya Attar a message saying that the two of them should “work on the plan” with her brother, Joseph.

“I am not working on any plan :),” Dalya Attar responded.

Months later, on Nov. 30, Dalya Attar sent a message to her brother and Co-Conspirator 1 that, per the indictment, said: “If that video really exists, it’ll be really helpful now,” an apparent reference to the footage of the consultant and the married man in bed captured in January, 2020.

Her brother responded to the message by saying he would “schedule the meeting.”

Then, on Dec. 6, Joseph Attar sent a text to the married man that said he “wanted to discuss an opportunity.” Dalya Attar filed for reelection to the House of Delegates the same day.

The next day, Joseph Attar met the man at the Greenspring Shopping Center in Pikesville where, according to the indictment, he laid out the blackmail.

“I have hours of footage of you in bed with [the consultant]... hours,” Joseph Attar apparently told the man. The ask, according to prosecutors, was simple: The man was to tell the consultant to leave Dalya Attar alone. “Don’t bring her up anymore to anyone. Stay out of this election,” he said. Or else, Joseph Attar threatened to “share this video with everybody you know, everyone she knows, every Rabbi in town, your kids, your wife, her daughters.”

Joseph Attar showed the man some of the video he had, according to the indictment.

Shortly thereafter, Joseph Attar sent a WhatsApp message to the consultant to “suggest you have a conversation with” the married man, according to the indictment.

Five days later, on Dec. 12, Joseph Attar asked the man if his demands would be met. The man responded on WhatsApp by saying “I already told her. I did what you asked. There’s nothing else I can do,” according to the indictment. “You have everything you asked for. Put it to bed. Leave me the hell alone,” the man added.

The indictment does not say what happened in the interim, but on April 8, 2022, the consultant made a Facebook post that included an article about a vote in the Maryland Legislature. The post’s caption, which is not included in the indictment, questioned why certain delegates voted the way they did.

“Looks like she wants the world to know about her and [the married man],” Dalya Attar wrote to her brother and Co-Conspirator 1 in a WhatsApp message, which included a screenshot of the post, according to the indictment. “She needs to know we’re serious.”

Later that day, Dalya Attar sent another WhatsApp message about the aggrieving Facebook post, noting that it “didn’t get any traction so this one is not a big deal.”

“I just don’t want her to get comfortable and start posting again,” Dalya Attar wrote to her brother and Co-Conspirator 1, according to the indictment.

The then-delegate then suggested they show the video to someone in the hopes the information would get to the consultant, scaring her away from the upcoming election, according to the indictment.

“I have an election coming up and I really don’t care,” Dalya Attar said in a voice message to Co-Conspirator 1 on WhatsApp, according to the indictment. “I just care about it getting back to [the consultant] and she understands that we’re serious, not another little threat or something like that, she needs to understand we’re serious.”

The last messages prosecutors cite in the indictment are from Joseph Attar to the consultant, which were sent June 28, 2022, a little less than a month before the Democratic primary.

Joseph Attar made several threats to the consultant then, according to the indictment.

“You have nothing to worry about if you accept my offer,” Joseph Attar wrote.

“Put me to the test. I dare you,” he added.

The Democratic primary took place on July 28, 2022. Dalya Attar was the leading vote getter in her race.

Banner reporters Hallie Miller, Emily Opilo, Dylan Segelbaum and Pamela Wood contributed to this story.