Two former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and two former foreign military officials have been charged with threatening violence and deportation against a Chinese national and his family during a fake raid on his Orange County home five years ago, federal prosecutors said Monday.
The 4 men also demanded $37 million and the rights to the person’s business, in keeping with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Authorities haven’t disclosed the businessman’s name.
The men were arraigned on Monday on charges of conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion, conspiracy to violate rights and deprivation of rights under cover of law. All pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors said the group drove to the victim’s Irvine home on June 17, 2019, and held him, his wife and their two children in a room for hours, taking their phones and threatening to deport him if he didn’t comply with their demands. Authorities said the person was a legal everlasting resident.
The men slammed the businessman against a wall and choked him, prosecutors said. Fearing for his safety and that of his family, he signed documents giving up his multimillion-dollar stake in Jiangsu Sinorgchem Technology Co. Ltd., a China-based company that makes rubber chemicals.
Federal prosecutors said the person’s business partner, a Chinese woman who has not been charged, financed the fake heist. The two have been embroiled in legal battles over the corporate within the U.S. and China for greater than a decade, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said certainly one of the accused men, Steven Arthur Lankford – who retired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 2020 – used a terminal on the sheriff’s department to go looking a national database for information concerning the victim. They said Lankford, 68, drove the opposite three men to the victim’s home in an unmarked sheriff’s department vehicle, showed his badge and identified himself as a police officer.
It was not immediately clear whether Lankford has an attorney who can speak on his behalf. The Associated Press left a message Monday at a phone number listed for Lankford, but he didn’t respond.
Federal prosecutors also filed charges against Glen Louis Cozart, 63, of Upland, also a former deputy sheriff. The AP left a phone message for Cozart, but he didn’t immediately respond.
Lankford was hired by Cozart, who in turn was hired by Max Samuel Bennett Turbett, a 39-year-old British citizen and former member of the British military who can also be charged. Prosecutors said Turbett was hired by the Chinese businesswoman who financed the fake heist.
Matthew Phillip Hart, 41, an Australian citizen and former member of the Australian military, also faces charges within the case.
“It is critical that we hold public officials, including law enforcement officers, to the same standards that we hold the rest of us,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada. “It is unacceptable and a serious violation of civil liberties for a sworn law enforcement officer to take the law into his own hands and abuse the authority of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”
If convicted, the 4 men resist 20 years in prison each.
