Ex-Aryan Brotherhood member turned life coach found guilty of California EDD fraud and perjury
A reputed former member of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who gained fame for turning his back on the group and embracing nonviolence was found guilty Tuesday in Lake Superior Court of perjury and fraud for lying on government loan applications and illegally collecting unemployment benefits.
Michael Lynne Thompson, who was featured in several documentaries and a podcast, represented himself in a bench trial before Judge David Markham. He served 45 years in California prisons after being convicted of two murders and was paroled by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019.
Looking dapper in a beige corduroy blazer and carrying a carved walking stick, Thompson, who was 69 at the time of his 2021 arrest, blamed the false statements and unemployment theft on his co-defendant, Eric Abner Hutchins, who pleaded guilty and in September was sent to North Kern State Prison to begin serving an eight-year sentence.
Thompson also said that handwritten notes and signatures on documents and notes pertaining to the fraudulent applications were not his, even though he admitted that there was a similarity to his own handwriting.
In closing arguments Tuesday, Lake County Deputy District Attorney Sterling Thayer told the court that Thompson’s claim that he had been Hutchins’ victim and not a co-conspirator “defied credulity.”
He said that handwritten notes and signatures used for the applications were indeed Thompson’s, proving that he was involved in the fraud. Markham said in his verdict that he agreed that the writing was Thompson’s.
When the two were arrested in 2021, prosecutors said they had stolen nearly $400,000 in unemployment benefits, but after two of the fraud counts were dismissed by Markham, the total was closer to just over $100,000, Thayer said.
Thompson had been featured in a documentary on the Aryan Brotherhood while still in prison and after his parole quickly restarted his life as a prominent ex-con, life coach and drug counselor. He called himself a “square” and presented himself as a symbol of redemption after “45 years behind the iron gates.”
But prosecutors said he and Hutchins, whom he met in prison, quickly teamed up to apply for unemployment benefits, mostly by using the personal information of homeless and transient individuals whom they were supposed to be helping through a nonprofit.
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 also accused of lying about his parole status to apply for two loans from the federal Small Business Administration, and for fraudulently applying for unemployment for himself.
It was the largest such scheme in Lake County, prosecutors 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.
Thompson, who is out on bail, is due back in court on Jan. 14 to be sentenced by Markham.
At the courthouse on Tuesday with his wife and a friend, he told The Sacramento Bee that while he would prefer not to return to prison, he is not afraid of it.
“If that’s what it is, you have to go with it,” Thompson said.
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.
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 11, 2024 at 7:43 AM.
