Michael Lynn Thompson, charged with massive California unemployment fraud scheme

LAKEPORT — Before being freed from state prison after more than 40 years behind bars, ex-Aryan Brotherhood leader Michael Lynn Thompson promised the parole board he’d dedicate his life to philanthropy through his self-help program called Live, Learn & Prosper.

But according to authorities in Lake County, Thompson found prosperity through something else entirely: a massive fraud scheme that raked in millions through fradulent business loans and Employment Development Department applications. Now Thompson is back behind bars, along with a 45-year-old co-defendant, facing a 33-count criminal complaint, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Thompson, who turns 70 in October, is perhaps the most well-known ex-Aryan Brotherhood member, who joined in the 1970s then dropped out in the 1980s. He not only granted rare public interviews about the notoriously secretive prison gang, but testified against its members, billing himself as a gang expert. He allegedly bragged about special treatment this status brought him, like authorities serving him a whole Thanksgiving turkey along with the knives to cut it, in the Los Angeles County Jail.

He was featured in two early 2000s TV documentaries on the Aryan Brotherhood, where he said he dropped out and began cooperating with authorities over outrage that the gang’s other leaders authorized an Aryan Brotherhood member named Curtis Price to murder the father of a former gang member. When he was finally granted parole in 2019 after more than a dozen denials, he pledged that his life of crime was over and said he’d taken a vow of nonviolence that would last for the rest of his days.

In his parole hearing, Thompson denied the Orange County District Attorney’s contention that he played an active role in the 1973 double murder that sent him to prison, and instead claimed all he did was warn a co-defendant that the victims were plotting against him.

Now Thompson stands accused not of violent crimes, but exploitative white collar offenses, such as bilking homeless people out of unemployment, or signing up a fake Southern California firefighting company for $1.5 million in business loans. According to the complaint, Thompson and his co-defendant, whom he met in prison, convinced 16 people to give up their personal information to benefit the alleged scheme.

“Basically, the story was, ‘Oh, well, we’re going to apply for unemployment for you, we’ll take a fee and we’ll give you the rest,’” Lake County District Attorney Susan Krones told the Sacramento Bee. “And in most of these cases they never got any of the unemployment.”

As authorities in Lake County are fighting to keep Thompson incarcerated — he is being held without bail on a parole violation, on top of the 33-count complaint — lawyers with the California Attorney General’s office are fighting to hold together a 1986 double murder conviction while acknowledging that one of its key witnesses, Thompson, is not to be trusted.

That case involves Curtis Floyd Price, who was allegedly ordered by the white supremacist gang to murder Richard Barnes, a Los Angeles resident whose son, Steven Barnes, had dropped out of the gang and agreed to testify against its members. Thompson says he was the only high-ranking member to vote against the 1983 hit, and that it left a bad taste in his mouth. He dropped out of the gang soon after and testified against Price, who was sentenced to death for murdering Barnes and a woman named Elizabeth Hickey.

Price has been appealing his conviction and death sentence for more than 30 years. In recent court records, he described Thompson as a liar and exaggerator whose “multiple hearsay” claims about Hickey’s murder never should have been given to jurors. In their response, state prosecutors hardly defended Thompson against these attacks, noting that he testified to avoid potential racketeering charges and in the hopes of “pleasing parole authorities” down the line.

“In sum, no rational juror could have convicted anyone of anything solely on the word of the admitted perjurer and schemer Thompson,” the prosecutors wrote.