A federal grand jury has indicted Suffolk County, Massachusetts Sheriff Steven Tompkins on charges of extortion in connection with his shakedown of a retail cannabis dispensary.
Apparently thinking he was Tulsa King’s Dwight Manfredi, who extorted money from a similar operation in the TV program, Tompkins, the indictment alleges, put the squeeze on a giggle-weed company in exchange for help with licensing and opening a storefront in Boston.
Amusingly, some of the employees would have been jailbirds who would work there as part of the county’s “re-entry” program.
Tompkins is famous not only for his past transgressions, but also for ending cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2019. He is, in other words, a sanctuary sheriff.
The indictment notes that the unidentified company — known as “A” — like others, “sought to operate in counties that had been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition and enforcement.” One might assume those counties do not include Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard.
To get the joint rolling, the company partnered with Tompkins’ department, which “would help screen and refer graduates of its re-entry program to apply for work at Company A’s retail store,” the indictment says.
One cannot imagine what might go wrong with giving criminals access to cannabis. But, anyway, Tompkins inked the agreement in September 2019. That went to the state’s cannabis control commission, which OK’d the license for the company, then approved renewals through 2023.
Tompkins, the indictment alleges, extorted the company from 2020 through July 2023. He pressured the company into selling him
a pre-IPO [initial public offering] equity interest in Company A for $50,000 in exchange for Tompkins’s favorable action or inaction as the SCSD [Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department] Sheriff with respect to the SCSD’s partnership with Company A.
He forced the company to refund the $50,000 “at later dates in exchange for the same.” About mid-2020, Tompkins told a company representative that he wanted to “take part in the IPO” and “wanted to get in on the stock so [he] could make some cannabis money.”
The representative didn’t want to sell the pre-IPO stock to the sheriff. But Tompkins strong-armed him by telling him that he, Tompkins, helped the company get a license, and that the business “would continue to need Tompkins’s help for license renewals,” the indictment alleges.
On November 13, 2020, Tompkins and the representative concluded a “side agreement” by which Tompkins would receive 28,833 shares of the company’s stock in exchange for the $50,000. That money came from Tompkins’ retirement account. The stock’s value eventually rocketed to $138,403.
In late 2021 and early 2022, during his reelection campaign, Tompkins “demanded” that the representative refund his $50,000 investment. By then, however, the investment was worth less than $50,000, and the side agreement did not guarantee that Tompkins would not lose money. Afraid that Tompkins would terminate the company’s agreement with the sheriff’s department, though, the representative agreed to Tompkins’ demand.
The refund was paid in checks on which the memos read “loan repayment” or some other “expense to disguise the nature of the payments,” the indictment alleges. The sheriff received five checks: two for $12,500, two for $12,000, and one for $1,000.
The grand jury indicted Tompkins on two counts of extortion under 18 U.S. Code 1951, “Interference with commerce by threats or violence,” which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. He also faces a $250,000 fine.
FBI agents arrested him in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The indictment notes that Tompkins has landed in hot water before. In November 2020, he paid a $12,300 fine because he hired a niece supposedly to work in his office for $45,000 annually. He really hired her to care for his children. Other office personnel handled his personal chores as well. In 2015, he coughed up a $2,500 fine because he pressured eight business owners to take down his opponent’s political signs. Understandably, they complied with his demand.
But Tompkins isn’t just blatantly corrupt, or, as prosecutors allege, extorting money.
He also opposes ICE, and in 2019, declared that he would not cooperate with the agency.
“I was hired to do local, not federal work,” Tompkins told the CommonWealth Beacon. “The ICE population is transient — they’re not staying here.”
Thus did he end a 16-year contract with ICE “to place detained immigrants in beds at the South Bay House of Correction,” the website continued. Instead, he would house women prisoners there.
Tompkins told the website he felt bad “for the families of immigrants who may have to travel farther to meet with detainees, but he said he is also concerned about women inmates facing substance abuse and mental health issues.”
He was so proud of that move — and his “gender-specific programming” — that he posted an article about it at this campaign website.
Suffolk County is not on the Justice Department’s recently released list of sanctuary jurisdictions, but it likely will be.
Not surprisingly, one of Tompkins’ big fans is far-left Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, which is on the list. She thinks ICE agents are “neo-Nazis,” and has vowed on more than one occasion to unlawfully harbor illegals.
In her latest endorsement, Wu called Tompkins a “passionate, dedicated servant of the people.”
Wu’s judgment, however, is open to question. The Daily Caller linked her to Communist Chinese intelligence through a spy who doubled as a fundraiser.
Far-left Democratic Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles — another city on the list — is likewise linked to Chinese intelligence, the Caller has reported. Like Wu, her connection is through a Chinese donor and rainmaker.