Shakedown or ‘cheap spy novel’: What did L.A. investigators do for a Chinese millionaire?
The job that Jing “Annie” Liu wanted done was not one for a lawyer.
The Chinese chemical magnate had spent seven years pursuing a man she once called her “most trusted secretary” across two continents.
In lawsuits filed in China and the United States, Liu claimed the former aide had stolen the equity from her companies while she served time in a Chinese prison. At issue was an estimated $100 million.
The litigation was dragging into an eighth year when, in late 2018, Liu tapped out an email on her iPad to an Australian security consultant.
“I pay so much for the lawyers,” she wrote, according to an email disclosed in a civil case brought by her former aide. “But now I think [using] lawyers not smart way to do it.”
Records and testimony in the Orange County Superior Court case show that, with her fortune hanging in the balance, the wealthy industrialist turned to a strange cast of men to find the resolution her attorneys could not.
One June morning five years ago, an active-duty L.A. County sheriff’s detective, two former deputies and two ex-soldiers showed up on the Irvine doorstep of Liu’s former secretary, Hao Wang.
In an indictment, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles allege the men forced Wang to sign over the disputed company shares after assaulting and threatening to deport him. The defendants, who turned themselves in Aug. 12, have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to extort Wang and violate his civil rights. Liu has not been charged with any crimes.
The indictment does not identify Wang by name, referring only to a “Victim 1” who was embroiled in a business dispute with an unnamed wealthy Chinese national. Lawyers for the men accused of extorting Wang are now pushing back against the government’s portrayal of Wang, alleging he lied to U.S. authorities.
One of the defendant’s attorneys cast Wang as an “unscrupulous and unreliable man who fled China and now falsely claims himself a victim.” Another said his story had changed over time, with the latest version “sounding more like a cheap spy novel.”
In response to questions from The Times, Wang’s lawyer, Marc Williams, said in an emailed statement: “Individuals representing themselves as law enforcement threatened, physically assaulted, and extorted our client. He looks forward to justice being served.”
Three of the five people Wang sued in the Orange County civil case settled this year by paying $800,000 without admitting wrongdoing. Wang then dropped his case against the other defendants, including Liu, whose attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.
Records and testimony in the Orange County case present a fuller account of how a bitter, multimillion-dollar dispute in China came to a head in a quiet townhouse community in Irvine. What happened inside Wang’s three-story condominium remains in dispute, but it is clear the men with ties to Los Angeles County law enforcement who showed up that day were eager to make some money solving what Liu called her “last problem.”
“If I win this case we’ll finish,” she wrote in an email to the Australian consultant who contracted the Los Angeles lawmen. “If I lost this case we’ll lost everything.”
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Liu first turned to Max Turbett, a man who seemed to savor international intrigue.
After serving in a special forces unit of the United Kingdom’s military from 2007 to 2013, he said in a deposition, he started a company in New South Wales that specialized in “high value international investigations and debt recovery cases.” He called it “Oracle” and gave projects code names like “Eagle.”
Introduced to Turbett through a prior Oracle client, Liu claimed in a series of emails that Wang had stolen from her.
Wang, now 45, took a job with Liu’s Shanghai-based chemicals company in 2005, according to his deposition. He said he rose to oversee its international exports and became secretary of the company’s board, which Liu chaired.
In 2008, Wang said in the deposition, he borrowed $1 million from Liu to contribute to the formation of a new company. He later sold 40% of his stake to an American private equity firm for 222,029,000 yuan, he said. At today’s exchange rate, that would be about $31 million.
In his civil complaint filed in Orange County, Wang claimed that Liu, who faced embezzlement charges in China, didn’t object to the deal because she wanted cash for her shares. It is unclear from Wang’s deposition and complaint whether he sold only his stake to the private equity firm or Liu’s shares as well.
Liu told a different story in her emails to Turbett. She was not guilty of financial crimes but the victim of a “political dispute” that cost her “two years without liberty.”
Former law enforcement and military officers are accused of using threats and violence in an effort to extort an Irvine man for nearly $37 million.
She told Turbett that, while imprisoned, she asked Wang to hold her shares in a trust. Instead, he “betrayed” her, she wrote, pocketing her share of the money from the private equity deal and stealing company documents from her home in Singapore — a claim Wang has denied.
Liu sued in courts in Nanjing, Shanghai and a county court in Georgia, where Wang was living after leaving China. The cases had been resolved in Wang’s favor when Liu asked the Australian in an email to “find solution going to finish this problem.”
“Just go to do everything you can,” she wrote. “Whatever all the costs.”
In his deposition, Turbett said he contacted a man he’d heard was “the go-to person in Los Angeles” for investigative services, a former sheriff’s deputy named Glen Cozart.
“An excellent professional,” Turbett said.
Cozart, 63, resigned from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department in 1994 shortly before being convicted of false imprisonment and perjury, according to a probation report reviewed by The Times.
Given a suspended sentence and put on probation, Cozart persuaded a judge to dismiss the conviction after a probation officer wrote the former deputy had “acknowledged his wrongdoing” and “appears very remorseful,” the report says.
By the time Turbett called him in 2019, Cozart had a private investigator’s license and his own security company. In a deposition, Cozart said Turbett asked for his help contacting a man who had stolen from a client.
“I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just go knock on the door,” Cozart said. “But I was willing to make some money and go help him.”
Cozart said his job was to assemble a team to approach Wang. He turned to an old colleague with whom he’d recently been reacquainted: Steven Lankford.
The two had worked the early morning shift at the old Hall of Justice jail in 1984, Lankford said in a deposition. After Cozart was transferred to patrol duty, Lankford didn’t see Cozart until they bumped into each other three decades later at a reunion for former jail deputies, Lankford said.
Lankford said he was looking for extra work, Cozart recalled.
While Cozart had resigned beneath a cloud of felony charges, Lankford climbed the ranks of the Sheriff’s Department.
Assigned to the Antelope Valley as a patrol deputy and later a detective, Lankford was named Palmdale’s deputy of the year in 2001. He made it to the department’s most elite unit, the homicide bureau, before retiring in 2017 after a 34-year career.
Although Lankford faced several civil lawsuits over the years and was involved in one on-duty shooting, the complaints were all dismissed, and the shooting, in which the Sheriff’s Department said a mentally ill man was found holding toy guns, was deemed justified.
In a court filing, Lankford said he was promptly hired back as an “independent contractor / sworn deputy” to investigate cold case homicides for 120 days a year. He kept his badge, gun, county car and access to confidential law enforcement databases, which he used for Cozart’s assignment bankrolled by Liu in China.
At the homicide bureau, Lankford said in his deposition, he ran Wang’s name in a database, which showed he was wanted by Interpol for alleged financial crimes. Wang claimed Liu bribed Chinese officials to issue the “red notice” for his arrest. In their indictment, prosecutors said the Interpol notice did not by itself authorize U.S. officials to arrest Wang.
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said through a spokesperson that it was unaware of Lankford’s alleged activities on behalf of Liu “until after he had separated from the Department in April 2020,” and that the use of his badge and database search were violations of department policy and potentially criminal offenses.
In response to the Sheriff’s Department’s statement, Lankford’s attorney, Richard Steingard, said: “In theory they are correct, but in the context of this case they’re entirely wrong.”
Lankford, Cozart and Turbett made plans to approach Wang the next week. In his deposition, Lankford said Cozart summed up his role as the active-duty law enforcement officer in the operation: “Keep the peace and make sure everything is legit and things don’t get out of control.”
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The morning of June 17, 2019, Wang stepped out of his three-story condo and found two men on his doorstep.
Cozart identified himself as an immigration official, according to a federal indictment. Lankford, who said in a court filing he went to the home not in his capacity as a police officer but an “independent contractor,” showed Wang his sheriff’s badge. The men asked to speak with Wang inside.
Wang let them in and directed them to the second floor. Turbett followed them inside with another man, Matthew Hart, a former member of the Australian armed forces, the indictment says.
According to the indictment, Lankford took Wang’s phone before he and Hart began searching the condo. The detective went to a bedroom where he found Wang’s wife with the couple’s 4-year-old son. He flashed his badge, took her phone and told her to come downstairs, federal prosecutors allege.
Wang’s 21-year-old stepson was brushing his teeth when he noticed a man was watching him, Wang’s civil complaint says. Who are you, he asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man said.
His name was Thanh “Mason” Ly, a retired L.A. County Sheriff’s Department sergeant who said in a deposition he worked for years as an “international liaison” to the U.S. State Department, FBI and consular offices.
Ly said Cozart hired him to translate on the chance that Wang didn’t speak English. Once it became clear that he did, Ly said, he left.
Prosecutors dispute that claim, but have not charged Ly with any crimes. Details from Ly’s deposition in the Orange County case align with the person referred to in the indictment as “Individual B.” Ly’s attorney in the civil case did not respond to requests for comment.
Sitting with Turbett, Cozart and Lankford at the kitchen table, Wang “looked a little surprised and probably shocked a little bit that, you know, somebody was at his house,” Lankford said in his deposition.
All three men denied that anyone detained, assaulted or threatened Wang and his family. “If I had seen that,” Turbett said, “that would have been the end of the conversation.”
Turbett said he called Liu and put her on speakerphone. After she explained who the men were, Wang seemed open to the idea of giving up the disputed shares, Turbett claimed.
“His exact wording to me was that if I walked up to him any day on the street and said, you know, ‘Could you transfer the equity back to Ms. Liu,’ he would just sign it,” Turbett said. “It’s nothing to him. He didn’t want it.”
Prosecutors tell a much different story. According to the indictment, Cozart told Wang if he didn’t sign, he and his wife would be deported and separated from their younger U.S.-born child, who would grow up in foster care.
When Wang tried to run downstairs, Hart yanked him back up the stairs, ripping his shirt collar, prosecutors say. According to the indictment, Hart slammed Wang against the wall and choked him.
“Don’t f— with me,” Hart allegedly said. “I’m not the police.”
Hart shoved Wang’s son when he tried to intervene, causing him to fall and hit his head, according to the indictment. Wang then grabbed a knife and screamed, “If you aren’t police, why are you in my house?”
Lankford threatened to arrest Wang for brandishing the knife, the indictment says. He was not a “dirty cop,” he allegedly said, but if Wang didn’t sign in five minutes he would take him to the Chinese Consulate.
Lankford’s lawyer said the former detective did nothing wrong. “Mr. Lankford vehemently denies that he or any of the others mistreated the so-called victim or his family in any way,” Steingard said. Lankford has cooperated with the FBI, including turning over contemporaneous notes of his encounter with Wang, he added.
In fear for his life, Wang said, he signed an agreement to give up his disputed stake in Liu’s company, along with $37 million to be handed over via bank transfer. In exchange, Liu agreed to drop the criminal proceedings against Wang in China and ensure that the Interpol notice was withdrawn.
In his deposition, Cozart said he summoned a notary public who witnessed Wang, Turbett and Lankford sign the deal, including a handwritten copy Turbett had drafted at the kitchen table.
Before Wang signed, Lankford claimed in his deposition, Wang offered him a bribe to make “this thing to go away.”
“I told him I couldn’t,” Lankford said. “And the next thing he’s signing the paperwork.”
Cozart, who denied that he identified himself as an immigration official, said in his deposition that he left before Wang signed. Waiting outside, he said he saw Wang walk out with Turbett and Lankford.
“They were talking outside, shaking hands, laughing, patting each other on the back,” he said. “I was so happy at that moment because a successful investigation means a lot to me.”
Cozart said he billed Turbett’s company for $133,140. At Lankford’s request, Cozart said in his deposition, he paid the detective $10,000 in cash and the rest — about $30,000 — by check.
Cozart’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski, said her client’s work had been “in response to the theft of business shares and cash by the unscrupulous and unreliable man who fled China and now falsely claims himself a victim.”
Turbett’s lawyer, Craig Wilke, said his client “categorically denies” any wrongdoing, noting they waived extradition rights as a U.K. citizen to face the charges in L.A.
“Mr. Turbett is a citizen of the United Kingdom and a decorated military veteran who served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Wilke said. “Since retiring from the military, he has earned an impeccable reputation for providing global investigative and security services.”
According to Wilke, Wang waited 10 hours to report the incident to Irvine police. Wang acknowledged allowing Turbett and the others to enter his home and made no allegations of being threatened or assaulted at the time, Wilke said.
The day after visiting Wang, Ly flew to China to hand-deliver the documents to Liu. Cozart offered $25,000 for the task, which Ly called in his deposition “an offer I cannot refuse kind of thing.”
After landing in Shanghai, Ly called a number that Cozart gave him and was directed to a hotel. Liu was waiting upstairs.
Liu signed the document, returned it to Ly and thanked him.
After eating lunch, Ly caught a plane back to California. At Cozart’s request, Ly said, he certified the document that Liu had signed with the California secretary of State and Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles before turning it over to Turbett at a hotel lobby.
“It’s some type of agreement or contract,” Ly said of the piece of paper. “[I] somewhat read it, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s not important to me.”
The document was a critical piece of evidence for the Chinese court hearing Liu’s claims. Ten years after she first accused her former aide of theft, a judge ruled Wang had voluntarily transferred to Liu the disputed shares, estimated by his lawyers to be worth $100 million.
“It’s signed in front of local notaries in the United States,” the judge wrote in a decision that was translated into English and filed in the Orange County case. “There is no illegal coercion.”
Times staff reporter Stephanie Yang contributed to this report.
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