The anonymous hotel and casino employee who offered up the Ray Rice video may have lost his/her job — but they got a hefty check for that insubordination.
According to an investigation by Nicholas Schmidle of the New Yorker into celebrity gossip website TMZ — the Ray Rice uppercut video was purchased by Harvey Levin and company for over $100K.
A former security supervisor at the Revel, where the Feb. 15, 2014 incident took place, told Schmidle that one of the casino’s surveillance officers secretly recording the elevator footage off one of the monitoring room screens using a cell phone, and then left a message on TMZ’s tip line.
Four days later, TMZ posted a fuzzy clip of Rice dragging Janay Palmer’s unconscious body out of the elevator. A former TMZ photographer said the site paid $15,000 for that video, though TMZ called that figure “overblown.”
Then, on Sept. 8, TMZ released a second surveillance video that showed Rice punching Palmer in the face and knocking her unconscious. This footage reportedly cost them nearly $90,000.
Being present for any type of embarrassing situation involving a celebrity or star athlete can become big business if you have the camera rolling.