According to court documents, Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins was detained earlier this month in Florida on suspicion of extorting an executive at a cannabis firm in Boston. He is expected to appear in court next week for an arraignment.
According to federal prosecutors, Tompkins was originally expected to attend to pretrial services at the federal courtroom in Boston by 10 a.m. Friday. However, it is unclear whether the Democrat actually turned up. Pretrial services did not immediately respond to a voicemail left.
Federal Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelly set the date of Tompkins’ initial appearance and arraignment for Wednesday at 2:15 p.m. in courtroom 24 of the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in the Seaport, only hours after Tompkins was expected to arrive at the courthouse.
As of Friday afternoon, Tompkins had no lawyer listed in federal court records.
Phone calls and emails on Friday asking whether Tompkins had already returned to Massachusetts from Florida and whether he had legal representation were not answered by Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department spokespeople.
Tompkins was charged by federal prosecutors of pressing a Boston cannabis company executive to buy stock in the company prior to its planned IPO, including by reminding the executive that he had assisted the company with its Boston licensing efforts.
The company has not been identified by authorities.
Prosecutors claim that the executive feared and thought Tompkins would use his official role as sheriff to endanger the company’s cannabis license, its IPO, and a collaboration with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department.
According to federal authorities, Tompkins reportedly got a pre-IPO interest in business stock after the CEO acceded to his demands and signed an amended cooperation agreement in 2020.
Federal authorities claimed that in order to buy firm stock at a pre-IPO price, Tompkins transferred $50,000 from his retirement account to another account under the executive’s control.
However, years later, the stock’s value dropped, and Tompkins allegedly wanted a return of $50,000. According to prosecutors’ statement, Individual A complied with Tompkins’ demands for full repayment of $50,000, even though the value of Tompkins’ investment had declined.
Individual A then issued five cheques to Tompkins to reimburse his $50,000 investment between roughly May 2022 and July 2023. Prosecutors said that Individual A concealed the nature of some of the payments by writing memoranda on some checks that read loan payback and [business] expense, allegedly in compliance with Tompkins’ instructions.
Tompkins, 67, was charged with two counts of extortion under color of official right by a federal grand jury. He was freed on a $200,000 bond by a federal judge in Florida, who also mandated that he go to Massachusetts to appear in the Bay State.
This piece utilizes previously published Herald reporting.
