This episode appears to be based on the 1975 Samuel Bronfman II kidnapping hoax. On August 9, 1975, Samuel Bronfman II was abducted in New York. He was held for more than a week when his father, Edgar Bronfman, personally paid a $2.3 million ransom. He was later rescued by the FBI and New York City police from a Brooklyn apartment where he was found with his hands bound and his eyes and mouth covered with adhesive tape. The captors, both natives of Ireland, were a former limousine operator, Dominic Byrne, and his neighbor, former fireman Mel Patrick Lynch. Byrne claimed that he and Samuel were homosexual lovers and that Bronfman's nine-day disappearance in August 1975 was a hoax abduction engineered by the 23-year-old whiskey heir himself. Both Byrne and Lynch--acquitted of kidnapping but convicted of extortion charges--spent several years in prison.
Actor Gerry Becker's first appearance in the series, he will go on to play several different characters on this series and on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).
To date, the first onscreen appearance of actor Gerry Becker, who has played multiple roles on the series.
Chris Noth (Detective Mike Logan) & Reg Rogers (Jason Bregman) also worked together on A Material World (2014) (episode 5.17), as Peter Florrick & Asher Mercer respectively.