Four former law enforcement and military officers are being accused of conducting a raid in 2019 that they used to extort a businessman out of $37 million.
The four accused individuals were paid by the victim's business partner, a wealthy Chinese national, to engage in the "bogus raid", according to NBC News.
They then made the businessman sign over his multimillion-dollar interest in Jiangsu Sinorgchem, a Chinese rubber chemical manufacturer. He had previously been in a dispute regarding the company for years.
According to the DOJ, the four men involved were:
- Steven Arthur Lankford, 68, of Canyon Country, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputy who stopped working for LASD in 2020 and owns a Santa Clarita-based process service company;
- Glen Louis Cozart, 63, of Upland, a former LASD deputy who owns and operates a San Bernardino County-based private investigation and security services company;
- Max Samuel Bennett Turbett, 39, of Australia, a United Kingdom citizen and former member of the British military who owns an Australia-based private investigation and asset recovery business; and
- Matthew Phillip Hart, 41, of Australia, an Australian citizen and former member of the Australian military who owns an Australia-based risk management services business.
The NBC report says that during the raid, the man's wife and two children were present. The victim and his business partner, referred to only as "unindicted co-conspirator 1," a wealthy Chinese national, were not named, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
In December 2018, the unindicted co-conspirator asked Turbett to help resolve her business dispute, expressing frustration with costly litigation and seeking an alternative solution, prosecutors said. She promised Turbett they could both retire if he succeeded.
Turbett and the co-conspirator then created fake settlement agreements, requiring victim 1 to transfer nearly $37 million in cash and shares in Jiangsu Sinorgchem to her. This set off a chain of events leading to the staged raid on June 17, 2019, according to the report.
Before the raid, Turbett hired Cozart, who then recruited Lankford, a sheriff’s deputy, to locate victim 1 using a law enforcement database, which was against policy, prosecutors said.
Turbett and Hart flew from Australia to Los Angeles to meet with Cozart and Lankford to plan the sham raid. During the raid, the defendants detained the victim and his family, confiscated their phones, and subjected the businessman to physical threats until he signed the agreements, prosecutors said.
Although warned not to contact police, the victim reported the incident after the defendants left. Lankford later lied to police, claiming the raid was legitimate and that no force was used.
By November 2019, all defendants had been paid for their roles in coercing the businessman, with the co-conspirator paying Turbett’s company around $419,813 and thanking him for a "very good job," according to prosecutors.
United States Attorney Martin Estrada commented: “It is critical that we hold public officials, including law enforcement officers, to the same standards as the rest of us. 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.”
“The defendants in this case allegedly believed they could carry out vigilante justice by using official police powers to enter the home of vulnerable victims and extorting them out of millions of dollars,” said Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.
The full DOJ press release can be read here.
