Four mercenaries, including two former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies, were indicted over a sham raid that violently extorted a man out of $37 million after being hired by his former business partner in China, the Washington Post reports. Prosecutors described how the team of mercenaries, all former law enforcement or military, allegedly held a man and his family in their home under threat of violence and deportation to get him to sign away millions of dollars to his ex-partner. The men threatened to separate the parents from their two children. “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 FBI agent Akil Davis in Los Angeles.
The four men — former deputy Steven Arthur Lankford, 68, former deputy Glen Louis Cozart, 63, British military member Max Samuel Bennett Turbett of Australia 39, and former Australian military member Matthew Phillip Hart, 41, face charges of conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion, conspiracy against rights and deprivation of rights, according to prosecutors. The woman who allegedly hired the team was described as a Chinese national with homes in China and France. Her former business partner lives in Irvine, Calif., with his wife and two sons. The two former business partners were shareholders in two Chinese chemical companies. In about 2008, rubber chemical manufacturer Jiangsu Sinorgchem Technology Co. Ltd. purchased the assets of the two companies.
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