Despite being taped seeking Mafia-like protection money from a billionaire businessman, New York Post gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, the reporter insists he was set up.

But a quick check of Jared Paul Stern's own website suggests that Stern's interest in paying people to go away might be years old.

From an eeriely prescient, November 19,, 2004 posting at www.jaredpaulstern.com:

"An advance copy of the December Vogue hit our desk the other day with this heinous new Paris Hilton Guess ad on the inside cover...The question is not, "Can we afford you?" but "How much will it cost to make you go away?"

Indeed.