Ex-Aryan Brotherhood member who became life coach facing verdict in California EDD fraud trial
A reputed former member of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who gained fame for turning his back on the group and embracing nonviolence will be back in court in Lake County on Tuesday to face accusations that he and a partner stole nearly $400,000 in fraudulent state unemployment benefits.
Michael Lynne Thompson, who served 45 years in California prisons after being convicted of two murders, was paroled by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 and soon began applying for unemployment benefits through nonprofits that he ran, prosecutors said.
A trial before a judge in Lake County is set to wrap up Wednesday, with brief closing arguments before the court rules on his guilt or innocence. Thompson, who was 69 at the time of his 2021 arrest, had been featured in a documentary on the Aryan Brotherhood while still in prison, and after his parole quickly began a life as a prominent ex-con, life coach and drug counselor. He was featured in a podcast and additional documentaries, and presented himself as a symbol of redemption after “45 years behind the iron gates.”
But prosecutors said he and co-defendant Abner Hutchins, whom he met in prison, quickly teamed up to apply for $383,000 in unemployment benefits. It was the largest such scheme in Lake County, they said, and part of a wave of fraud to hit California’s Employment Development Department during the COVID-19 pandemic.
California lost an estimated $20 billion in pandemic-era unemployment aid to fraudsters. Most of that money came from the now-ended federally-funded Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, created just after the pandemic triggered an economic shutdown in March 2020. The department says it has recovered about $6 billion in fraudulently obtained benefits and was still working to claw back additional funds.
Lake County prosecutors said Thompson and Hutchins persuaded at least 16 people, most of whom were homeless, to provide their identifying information so that the pair could apply for unemployment insurance on their behalf. They were supposed to receive a portion of the proceeds as a fee, but in the end kept most or all of the benefits, Lake County District Attorney Susan Krones said when the pair were arrested in 2021.
Thompson was initially sent to prison in the 1970s for the murder of two men in Orange County. He says he joined the Aryan Brotherhood in 1977, and claimed to be the highest-ranking member of the gang to have left it.
He has denied responsibility for the Orange County slayings and was paroled after cooperating with authorities, including in one case where he was spirited into a courthouse inside a hollowed-out vending machine, according to the Bay Area News Group.
This story was originally published December 9, 2024 at 1:16 PM.
