Two former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were recently charged by the Department of Justice in a $37 million extortion attempt of a California businessman.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles announced that two former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputies along with two former foreign military officials were arraigned in a four-count indictment “that alleges they acted as a sham law enforcement team that entered an Irvine man’s home and threatened him and his family with violence and deportation unless he turned over nearly $37 million and signed away his rights in a business—worth tens of millions of dollars—that he shared with a wealthy Chinese national who secretly financed the bogus raid.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the two former Los Angles County sheriff’s deputies were identified as 68-year Steven Arthur Lankford and 63-year-old Glen Louis Cozart. The two other individuals were identified as 39-year-old Max Samuel Bennett Turbett, a former member of the British military, and 41-year-old Matthew Phillip Hart, a former member of the Australian military.
The charges in the indictment include conspiracy to commit extortion, conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law and attempted extortion.
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Prosecutors allege that on June 17, 2019, the four defendants drove to the businessman’s home in Irvine, California, where they forced him, his wife and their two children into a room for hours. The group reportedly confiscated the victims’ phones and threatened to deport the businessman, a legal permanent resident, if he didn’t meet their demands.
Prosecutors said the men violently slammed the businessman against a wall and choked him. According to the attorney’s office, the victim, who was not identified, signed documents that relinquished his stake in Jiangsu Sinorgchem Technology Co. Ltd., a China-based rubber chemicals company. His stake in the company was worth several million dollars.
“It is critical that we hold public officials, including law enforcement officers, to the same standards as the rest of us,” United States Attorney Martin Estrada said in a press release. “It is unacceptable and a serious civil rights violation for a sworn police officer to take the law into his own hands and abuse the authority of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”
Prosecutors also alleged that Lankford previously searched for the victim on a database terminal within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department.
In a statement to the Associated Press (AP), an attorney for Turbett said, “We are disappointed that five years after the incident in question and days before the statute of limitations expired, the United States Attorney chose to bring these charges based on the word of an unreliable witness motivated by financial gain.”
If the men are found guilty in the case, they could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each extortion count and up to 10 years in federal prison for each deprivation of rights-related count.