PITTSBURGH — A Butler County woman who runs a horse rescue group was involved in a scheme to extort property from a businessman by threatening to tell his wife about their sexual affair, according to federal prosecutors.

The defendant, 44-year-old Pamela A. Vivirito of Valencia, denies the allegations in the indictment that a federal grand jury handed down last week.

“It’s very untrue,” Vivirito told the Butler Eagle. “Nothing like that took place.”

The FBI arrested her this past Friday morning at the Target store parking lot on Route 8 in Richland Township, Allegheny County. Later that day, she made her initial appearance before Federal Magistrate Judge Cynthia Eddy in Pittsburgh.

Vivirito, head of Equine Angels Rescue, is to be arraigned this coming Friday on a single count of interference with commerce by extortion.

The indictment, which was unsealed Friday, charges Vivirito with a single count of interference with commerce by extortion.

According to the charges in the complaint, Vivirito from May 2012 to this month used her sexual relationship with the married businessman to extort unspecified property from him.

The indictment did not identify the man, referring to him instead as “Person 1” whose business interests include “the rental of commercial property and in the construction industry.”

Vivirito “did obtain and attempt to obtain the property of Person 1 with his consent having been induced by (her) wrongful use of threats to publicize and expose her sexual affair with (him),” prosecutors allege in the indictment.

Those threats, the indictment said, “caused Person 1 to fear that he, his business and his wife’s business would suffer economic harm if such information were to be publicized or exposed.”

Vivirito refuted the charges and insisted there was “absolutely no affair” and “no relationship” with the married man. But, she claimed, “he wanted one.”

Asked what she believed his motive was in making the allegations against her, Vivirito said, “He’s out to save himself.”

Vivirito said she has hired a Pittsburgh attorney, who she did not identify, to represent her in the case federal against her.