Those Law & Order Scripts Just Keep on Coming

Ripped out of the headlines faster than Dick Wolf spins off shows. “Cheatin’ Hearts Get Scammed”:

A pair of con artists has been shaking down wives who have illicit affairs in hot-sheet hotels around Brooklyn — threatening to tell their husbands unless they cough up thousands of dollars, The Post has learned.

The sleazy scheme was bared after one victim, a mother of three, went to cops, who staged a sting.

The duo would case short-stay hotels to identify guests who looked like they were married women there for a quickie with a secret lover, sources said.

Then they approached the cheaters and said they’d been hired by their husbands to follow them and had gathered plenty of evidence.

They said the evidence could quietly vanish for a payoff of up to $2,000 — and the women, frantic to keep their indiscretions quiet, forked over the dough.

“They looked for women coming out of motels in the middle of the day with smiles on their faces,” one law-enforcement source said.

“Chances are anybody smiling as they leave a motel in the middle of the day is not leaving with the man they’re married to.”

As many as a dozen cheating housewives may have been victimized, sources said.

Things unraveled when the two men approached a Mill Basin woman on Jan. 12.

They told her they had videotape of her going in and out of hotels and demanded money, according to the criminal complaint.

The frantic woman went to police, and 63rd Precinct detectives set up a sting at the Arch Diner, at Flatlands and Ralph avenues.

The woman met one man, Carmine Russo, 24, outside and, with cops watching, gave him $1,500, police said.

Russo, who lives on Ocean Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, is charged with grand larceny by extortion and petit larceny.

The whistleblower, who said her hubby still doesn’t know of her two-timing ways, told The Post the experience has jolted her.

“It is horrible! Everybody is out to ruin me!” she said.

Police are asking other victims to contact them at (718) 258-4401.

Did you catch the latest Life-Imitates-Briscoe line there? “Chances are anybody smiling as they leave a motel in the middle of the day is not leaving with the man they’re married to.”