4 former officers accused of staging sham raid to extort nearly $37 million from California man

Four former law enforcement and military officers are accused of conducting a sham raid on a California businessman’s home in 2019 and forcing him to sign away rights to his business worth tens of millions of dollars, federal prosecutors said.

The defendants, at the behest of the victim’s business partner who financed the “bogus raid,” entered the businessman’s home in Irvine and physically assaulted him, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement Monday.

The four phony officers — acting as if it were a legitimate law enforcement operation — forced the man to sign over paperwork relinquishing his multimillion-dollar interest in Jiangsu Sinorgchem, a Chinese rubber chemical manufacturer, which the victim and his business partner had been in a dispute about for years, prosecutors said.

The man’s wife and two children were home during the raid. The victim was not identified by name, and neither was his business partner, a woman who was identified only as unindicted co-conspirator 1, a “wealthy Chinese national,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Steven Arthur Lankford, 68, of Canyon Country, California; Glen Louis Cozart, 63, of Upland, California; Max Samuel Bennett Turbett, 39, of Australia, who is a United Kingdom citizen; and Matthew Phillip Hart, 41, of Australia, are charged in a superseding indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy against rights and one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, the office said.

Lankford is a retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who stopped working for the agency in 2020 and owns a Santa Clarita-based process service company, Cozart is also a former county sheriff’s deputy who owns a private investigation and security services company, Turbett is a former member of the British military who owns a private investigation and asset recovery business, and Hart is a former member of the Australian military who owns a management service business, prosecutors said.

The four defendants are scheduled to be arraigned Monday afternoon. Their attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment.

“It is critical that we hold public officials, including law enforcement officers, to the same standards as the rest of us,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in the statement. “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.”

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each extortion-related count and up to 10 years in federal prison for each count related to deprivation of rights, prosecutors said.

According to prosecutors, the victim and his business partner had a yearslong dispute over their ownership in the rubber chemical manufacturer. The disagreements led to at least three lawsuits in China and one in Atlanta, prosecutors said.

In December 2018, the unindicted co-conspirator allegedly contacted Turbett to help with her business dispute. She said the long and costly litigation had not been “the smart way” to handle her dispute and asked Turbett to find a different “solution to finish the problem,” prosecutors said. She promised Turbett that if he helped her, “we can both retire,” authorities said.

Turbett and the unindicted co-conspirator drafted purported settlement agreements calling for victim 1 to transfer assets — including about $36,972,386 in cash, as well as lucrative shares in Jiangsu Sinorgchem — to the unindicted co-conspirator, prosecutors said.

That move led to a chain of events that led to the faux raid on June 17, 2019. Before then, prosecutors alleged, Turbett hired Cozart to find victim 1 and assemble a team to get victim 1’s signature on the settlement agreements.

Cozart, in turn, hired Lankford, then a sheriff’s deputy, who, against department policy, searched victim 1’s name and date of birth in the National Crime Information Center database. Law enforcement databases are not to be used for personal reasons, prosecutors said.

Turbett and Hart flew from Australia to Los Angeles, where they met with Cozart and Lankford to plan out the sham raid, prosecutors said.

During the hoax raid, the defendants forced the victim and his family into one room, authorities said. Their phones were taken away, prosecutors said, and they were prevented for leaving for hours. The businessman was also choked, slammed into a wall and threatened with deportation for him and his wife, as well as possibility of permanently separating from their 4-year-old son, prosecutors said.

The victim then signed the settlement agreements, authorities said. Although the victim was told not to contact the police, when the defendants left, he reached out to Irvine police, prosecutors said.

Lankford falsely told police that he had been at the businessman’s home for a legitimate law enforcement purpose, that the businessman consented to all parties being in his home and that no force was used, prosecutors said.

By November 2019, all defendants had been paid for their work coercing the businessman to sign the settlement, authorities said.