OREGON
Oregonian
By Bryan Denson | bdenson@oregonian.com
on June 11, 2014 at 3:37 PM, updated June 11, 2014 at 3:43 PM
A convicted bank robber was sentenced to nearly three years in prison on Wednesday for making fictitious claims of child sex abuse against Roman Catholic priests in Portland and three other cities from behind bars.
Shamont Lyle Sapp was serving time at the U.S. Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa., in 2008, when he sued the Archdiocese of Portland, claiming he was sexually assaulted by one of its priests during his years as a teen runaway in the 1970s.
Sapp first drew national headlines in 2011, when he sued comedians Jamie Foxx and Tyler Perry for $1 million each, falsely claiming they stole his idea for a movie project titled “Skank Robbers.”
But the Skank Robbers scheme was child’s play compared to the work Sapp put in from 2005 to 2010, as he made false claims against priests in Portland, Spokane, Covington, Ky., and Tucson, Ariz. He took advantage of pending bankruptcies in Catholic dioceses to make his baseless claims, records show.
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