Man Trades Elmo Costume for a Jail Suit Elmo bad. Elmo go to jail. Dan Sandler won't be playing Elmo for a while. The man known for dressing up in an Elmo costume and harassing New York City tourists with anti-Semitic outbursts was sentenced in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday to a year in jail after admitting he tried to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts. Just before sentencing, the man, Dan Sandler, who has also gone by the name Adam Sandler, told Judge Robert Stolz that he was not remorseful. "This is not the case of someone in the back room of the office trying to embezzle money - this is more of a protest, like laying down in the intersection," Mr. Sandler said. He added, "I am in no way sorry to the Girl Scouts organization, because I think they are a corrupt organization." In addition to imposing the one-year sentence, Judge Stolz issued permanent orders of protection for two female employees of the Girl Scouts whom Mr. Sandler had been accused of harassing. Last month, Mr. Sandler, 49, of Ashland, Ore., pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree attempted grand larceny and third-degree stalking in return for the one-year sentence. Prosecutors said he sent harassing e-mails in 2012 to his former supervisor at the Girl Scouts, where he had worked in 2007 and 2008 on a short-term computer programming project. He also tried to force his way into the organization's headquarters in Manhattan. In some of his e-mails, Mr. Sandler demanded $2 million in cash and threatened to spread the false story that the Girl Scouts regularly arranged sexual encounters between men and its campers if he did not get the money, prosecutors said. The sentencing was just the latest of many odd encounters Mr. Sandler has had with the law. In the 1990s, he operated a pornographic Web site in Cambodia called "Welcome to the Rape Camp," which purported to show videos of nonconsensual sex. The Cambodian authorities deported him in 1999. After he left his job with the Girl Scouts in November 2008, he bought an Elmo suit for $300 and joined the other costumed characters in Times Square and Central Park, charging money to have his picture taken with children. But he soon became known as "Evil Elmo" and "Bad Elmo" for his habit of making obscene rants at passers-by. Last year, one of his outbursts in Times Square led to an arrest and guilty plea for disorderly conduct. He then moved to San Francisco, where he was spotted delivering similar tirades in a park before being arrested in May on the New York charges in the extortion case. Mr. Sandler's lawyer, Lori Cohen, said he pleaded guilty to extortion to avoid a trial and the risk of a longer sentence for the original top charge, first-degree attempted larceny. Still, Ms. Cohen said the evidence was weak. "Is there any realm in which we think the Girl Scouts would pay him money because he sent them e-mails?" she said. It was sort of a silly case.