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Stories of everyday people who have experienced government corruption and how they have turned it around to good government.
Hello, and welcome to #Corruption Chronicles, the #true crime #podcast about everyday people who find themselves and their communities embroiled in a corrupt scheme and how they move from corruption to #good governance.
This is podcast one in the Canna-Greed series. I'm your host, Debbie Peterson. In the Corruption Chronicles previous podcast 4, The State of #Cannabis Versus the Nation, I introduced #government corruption in the legalized cannabis industry with today's cohost Darryl Cotton. In that podcast, we mentioned Amy and Biker, the subjects of today's podcast, but we didn't follow up right away. We waited. We were waiting for the right moment. We were waiting for attorneys to give their blessing. And out of concern for the safety of some of the participants,
We expose all of this in this CANNA-GREED series. Amy has a message for all of us at the end. There are some recent encouraging events in cannabis, leading us to believe that maybe someone is finally listening. We're seeing more and more coverage from the LA Times, the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, Fox News, and the cannabis press.
At the state level, #LosAngeles area assembly member #Jones-Sawyer has worked tirelessly to legislate for both safe and fair cannabis legalization. On March 23, 2023, the state's joint legislative #audit committee authorized his request for an inquiry into six jurisdictions. State Auditor Parks - and this is #California - said they'll be looking for patterns in the licensing rules that indicate whether certain practices are, as he said, "more susceptible to #fraud and abuse," and reviewing cannabis permits to check whether #local authorities followed the rules.
But it's now six weeks since that announcement, and there is still no indication of which six communities will be reviewed. Auditor Parks, there are honest cannabis companies and victims of these #corrupt officials and their operators who, like me, urge you don't just look but uphold the law and bring these #offenders to #justice. If you're one of our listeners today, you can contact your California #assemblyman and #senator and tell them to get on with the audits. Investigate the most corrupt cities.
And you can do that by going to FindYourRep.Legislature.ca.gov. You can find links wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And here's the bad news, the reality. The court system proves the adage that justice delayed is justice denied. It takes years for litigants to get through the system, which causes untoward physical, emotional, and financial stress. People damaged in the cannabis chaos report losing millions of dollars and years of their lives to end up with nothing or lose everything.
And if it's the government being sued for corruption for the government subjects - and I use that terminology, 'subject' intentionally - because too often that's the attitude of government officials - all kinds of games get played. First, local government shuts down all #public access when it suspects legal action, and it takes everything to closed session, using the argument that the legal process must be private.
Then the government proceeds to spend thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of taxpayer dollars defending bad players in government; all under the guise of "protecting the city." And sadly, those cannabis cons and killings are so deep and wide, so out in the weeds, so down the rabbit holes, and so prevalent that it's almost impossible to dig up or dig out. In this #Canna-Greed series, we will cover the stories of honest people paying a price in the so-called 'legalized' cannabis industry. They're plagued by far too many corrupt #pay-to-play government officials who've invited dangerous criminals into our communities. These #cabals bring their entourages and their wide range of illegal drugs with them, and now they're killing our children with products laced with lethal #fentanyl. And as they infiltrate, elected officials and government attorneys play the hush-up game or look the other way.
Today, we start the series with the story of Amy and Biker. Last week, Amy was told that the San Diego police department, despite admitting there was "tons of motivation" behind Biker's death, would not reopen her husband's case. She's put them on notice of new facts and information and given them until May 10th to reopen the case. But more on that next.
There are certain communities in California where government corruption seems stronger than others. Mine. For instance, the idyllic peaceful #San Luis Obispo County. Then there's Humboldt, Mendocino, California, City, Adelanto, and San Diego.
I was a government insider when cannabis came to town. It was one of the many forms of #extortion, #bribery, and #self-dealing I found in local government agencies. But it was so extreme that I could no longer participate in a local government in which nearly all decisions on the information provided were skewed. So, I resigned to write the true crime story of the corruption I found, The HAPPIEST CORRUPTION - Sleaze, Lies, & Suicide in a California Beach Town, and also in the #Integrity 101 series, #CITY COUNCIL 101 - Insider's Guide for New #Councilmembers, and coming soon, WE THE PEOPLE 101 - How to Beat City Hall. You can get them on Amazon or wherever you buy books.
Some of the corruption was routed out with the help of many dedicated citizens. But by 2019, one man, a convicted felon, owned my town and was on his way to owning my county. It looked hopeless,
and no one seemed to care: not local officials, not state or national law enforcement, not elected officials, not the judiciary, or the press and media. But that's another story. Maybe for another podcast.
When my book, The Happiest Corruption, came out, Darryl texted me about issues in his neck of the woods, San Diego. I wasn't surprised. I was aware of connections between our cannabis #cabal and
San Diego business people, developers, and #dispensaries.
Before I go to Darryl, I want to interject a warning I received. I'm a real estate broker. In 2017, the real estate board of a county north of mine asked me to sit on a panel to advise its brokers of the impacts of the cannabis industry on real estate. I was seated next to a prominent real estate attorney.
After the panel finished, he took me to one side and warned me about what his brother, a sheriff in a county south of mine, and other sheriffs were coming across as legalized cannabis came to their counties. Dead bodies. More than ever they would have ever imagined. Government officials hush them up - bad for tourism, bad for their image, and they don't generally report suicides or when, as the French say, people are suicided.
And this is where Darryl Cotton comes in. In previous podcast number four, my co-host Darryl Cotton gives us an update on the cannabis industry and shares his innovations and inventions in organic farming. Darryl is an engineer, an urban farmer, a father, a dog owner, a developer, and someone who, when he sees something wrong, sees solutions and brings them. He's smarter than most of us, and he's tenacious. He researches relentlessly, diving down rabbit holes and crawling through the weeds. If you're someone who's had a similar experience of #conmen and #perjurers in cannabis, or someone who loves weeds and rabbit holes, he provides everything on his website, from court documents to legislation and public records requests.
He grows medical cannabis and traditional crops. So welcome, Darryl. Thanks for joining us today.
Hi, Debbie.Thanks for having me.
So what is it that brings you to this particular case today? Why are you here as our co-host?
Well, I'm a reluctant action figure, if you will. I've got this property that is an urban farm. It's very unique here in San Diego. As you said, it's on the border of Lemon Grove, and it's primarily for education. It shows how we use fish water to feed our plants. It's all organic. And we're doing this in economically depressed areas or anywhere by not having to till up soil. It's all soil-less and a way to show people how we can grow organically in pretty much any environment. I appreciate the opportunity to be the co-host.
As you asked, what brings me to this specific series is that I've felt the oppression that goes with cannabis corruption and licensing. So, having done that, experienced it, and still organizing and correcting some of these things, I've come to know quite a few other people that have experienced it, and the purpose of this show is to hear their stories.
So, Darryl, where could we find that if we want to know more about what you came across personally?
Where would we go online to find that?
I have chronologically started from about 2018 forward everything that's impacted my case. And then it got bigger and bigger and bigger as I met people exactly like Amy Sherlock and quite a few others.
So I've outlined what has affected me at 151farmers.org/2018/04/01/cana-greed-stay-awake-stay-aware-my-story.
But the Canna-Greed series is really all about it's not the weed; it's the greed. And the affected people who sometimes lost their fortunes are losing loved ones. It's not just me anymore. There's a consistent pattern. These people do not want to put things down in writing, and they will go to, in some cases, any length to make sure that they can monopolize and secure these adult-use cannabis licenses.
So, Darryl, if they didn't manage to take note of all of that big, long Internet address, how about they could just go to 151farmers.org and look for the canna-greed, stay awake, stay aware, and they'll find you there? If that's something that's of interest.
That's correct. And then the nice thing about that is that's a lot of litigation, not just in my case, but related case matters because as time has gone on, there have been more cases attracted to this because the same deficiencies in our government and our licensing processes have been found, not just in my cases, but quite a few.
So, Darryl, you relayed a story to me that really hit home. You said that you had been in negotiations with some folks who seemed pretty dodgy, and one night one of them asked you to get together with them.
Yeah. There are some similarities to these other cases. Our first guest in our series will be Amy Sherlock, and she is the widow of Michael Biker Sherlock here in San Diego. And it is totally within the
realm of possibilities that these people that want to monopolize cannabis licensing throughout the State, but in this case, particularly San Diego, if you are in their way, they will resort to any level, in any means necessary to secure that license. I had that same kind of call. I refused to go to the meeting.
And when we get to Amy Sherlock, you'll hear how Biker was invited to that meeting. He went and he didn't survive it. His death was ruled a suicide. Debbie, we don't believe it.
This confirmed Darryl's instinct that the offer to meet the dodgy buyer might have been unsafe.
Darryl felt he had to warn the man's widow, Amy. Amy, her team of experts, and Darryl and I are piecing together what really happened. His wife, Amy, agrees.
A New Jersey native, Biker grew up surfing the Jersey shore. In October 1995, a friend introduced Biker to street luge, a sport in which participants lay on their backs on 8-foot aluminum sleds on wheels and race down steep, paved roads getting up to speeds of 70 miles an hour. Only eight months after taking up the sport,
Biker won gold in his first professional race, the ESPN X-Games, where he went on to win another three gold, two silver, and one bronze medal. Before five years passed, Biker became the most decorated downhill skateboard and street luge athlete in history, setting up and consulting for NBC’s Gravity Games and winning another two gold and three silver there. He was front cover news and had too many titles to count. He doubled as a stuntman for the movie Rollerball and even had his own action figure.
Sherlock was known to his friends and close-knit family as a reliable friend and savvy businessman. He had studied business at Seton Hall in New Jersey and created Extreme Downhill International, which became the sanctioning body for street luge.
He employed and sponsored his friends, many of whom had followed him from the Jersey shore. They continued to surf the beaches of North County San Diego. It was these childhood friends who dubbed Sherlock "Mike Bike," a play on the character "Mike TV" from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
Amy and Biker married in 2000. Amy, a pharmaceutical representative, grew up in Huntington Beach, California. She played indoor volleyball in high school and traveled to three continents as an exchange student. She studied international relations at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and met Biker right after graduating at 23.
By 2004, Biker was a confirmed family man, with the birth of the first of two sons. He launched a successful longboard business that also sold $1800 versions of the Biker luge on which he had achieved such success.
In 2013 Biker closed the board business and found a new thrill in the emerging cannabis industry in San Diego. He invested the family savings in pursuit of his dream. He was “all-in” for two years with the same vision and energy he applied to everything he launched.
By 2014 he had formed a corporation for the new venture and pulled together the business plan. He was the celebrity mover and shaker with a clean background. Working with a team of investors and an attorney, he located two properties for purchase.
By June 2015, Biker had passed all the background checks, beat an appeal, and won all the needed permits for two San Diego dispensaries. Then, just six months later, on December 3rd, 2015, he was found deceased at his favorite surf spot.
It made no sense to Darryl that, having achieved the near impossible, that Biker would commit suicide. It didn’t make sense to me, either, that a devoted father would commit suicide right before Christmas.
His wife, Amy, agrees. And that’s why Amy sent the following email to the Police Department, the City Manager, and the Mayor of San Diego last week. She asked them, based on new forensic evidence, to re-open the investigation into her husband Biker’s death and to change his cause of death from suicide to undetermined.
Hi, Amy. Can you hear us?
Hello! Yes, I can hear you fine.
Amy, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
So I was telling a little bit of the audience about how we came to meet, and really this reach out to you on December 2019 had to be quite a shocker. But as it goes forward, you ultimately have sent an email to the city of San Diego, and that would be the mayor's office, the city attorney, the police chief, and the head of homicide with information that you got regarding your deceased husband's death, having ruled it a suicide. You suspected that not to be the case after you did your own investigation.
That's true. I ended up having to hire a private investigator, an independent medical examiner, and a handwriting expert, which all collaborated and went into the Armorist report that I gave to the police and am asking them to act upon right now. I originally gave them the information back in December of 2022, but they have refused to do anything. So this email was my way of putting them on notice that they can't just not do anything, that I'm asking them to just do their jobs.
Now, having read your email, you were very reasonable. That email went out on May 2nd of 2023, and you asked the city to respond by when?
May 10th.
Okay. So you gave them a little bit of time to review this, and when they had all this information, the chief of homicide gave you a cold phone call after sitting on this information for what, three and a half, four months, and he was telling you he wasn't going to act on it. Do I have that right? That's right.
He called me - it was five months later after having the information and promising me he would go over it - he just called me out of the blue and told me that there was tons of information regarding the motivations behind Biker's death, but that they weren't going to do anything. And basically, he was unwilling to make a phone call, or look into anything. Just nothing.
So you had a one-on-one with the detective, and now five months later, they're not willing to even re-
investigate any aspects of the information you provided.
Exactly. He's not willing to do anything.
A private investigative report, a forensic medical forensic report, and a forgery, are all contained in this one email.
You mentioned a report which I think you called the Armorist report. Armorist, is that the name of
the investigator? So when we're talking about it in the future, folks will know about it. The Armorist Report is the investigator?
That's correct. That's the name of the investigator's company. It's Armorist.
It's a private investigator.
When we were talking earlier, you had mentioned something else to me about this detective. You said you weren't asking for much. You just wanted them to do their job. What happened then?
He hung up on me.
Okay.
Well, I guess that was the end of our conversation. I reiterated to him that the only thing I've asked of anybody in all this was just to do their job, which was offensive. And he hung up me.
I've read that email and I'm sure there's a link to it here on the program. So you're going to wait until the 10th, see if there's a response, what that response is, and then we'll do our follow-up interview with you after that, right? That's the plan.
I hope I get a response.
I hope you do, too.
And we're all sorry for Biker's loss. He was a hell of a guy. He had gotten his dreams started. They were underway, and unfortunately, the rug was pulled out from underneath him. And your entire family.
Exactly. I'm going to do my best to fix it the best that I can.
Can you tell us a little about what's in the background? I see that chalice and board in
the back.
Yes, this was actually Biker's favorite trophy. It's a combination. It's called 'Downhiller of the Year Street Luge & Downhill Skateboarding,' and he won that year, all of it together. It was his favorite trophy.
It's kind of simple, and that's why he liked it. And I also use it as his urn. His ashes are inside, and back on this side is a handmade board by Gary Linden. It's a tow-in surfboard for big waves that he never rode, but it's unique and pretty.
Thank you for sharing that. I look forward to the next interview. But at the end of the day, this has been cannabis corruption. You weren't prepared for this. Most of this that you've now discovered, you found out through your own. Freedom of Information Act. And it's important that people hear your story because so many others have experienced the same type of corruption.
That's what I have learned just through you, Darryl, and people reaching out to me; it's pretty much across the State of California. And it's time that we shine some light on what's going on in California in the cannabis industry.
And what Debbie and I plan on doing is offering you multiple times to come back and focus on some of these things; at the end of the day, this is Amy's story, and we do want the listeners to understand that while it's your story, it's also all our stories.
You had a message that you wanted to share with us, I think. Was there anything you wanted to say to our listeners?
I ask anybody that if you know anything about what really happened to Biker or some of the cover-up that happened with his businesses to please reach out and let me know, let the police know. And we're just really trying to figure out what really happened to Biker. That's how all of this started was with Darryl reaching out to me and me figuring out that everything that I was told of before he died and what was happening with his business was all a lie. I've just been digging for the truth from the beginning.
Thank you, Amy, very much. I know this isn't easy. How many of these types of interviews have you done?
This is my first. Okay. Well, thank you for that. We all can appreciate what you're going through, but none of us can really say for sure how horrible this must be on you. And thank you for getting your
story out for others to be able to share it with you.
Thank you.
I ask that everybody just tune into the next episodes. We're going to get into the FOIA request that I did, finding the permit in my name, and dealing with the Department of Justice, and the Department of Cannabis Control, who is basically refused to do anything. We're going to get into all of that and I really hope that everybody will listen and help me get to the bottom of what really happened to Biker and his
business and what's happening in California in the industry as well.
Yes, thank you, Debbie, for bringing this forward, too. So I look forward to it and to the next show and hopefully by the 12th or 13th, whenever you want to get to the next show, we'll know more about what
the city will do for you.
And if I could just clarify a couple of the things. FOIA you mentioned is a Freedom of Information Act request, where everyone, as citizens, can go to the government and ask us to provide us with information that is public record and belongs to us. And I also wanted to point people to Justice4Amy.org and suggest that folks can go find out more there. But more than that, really, what we want to ask you to do as a sign of support go to Justice4Amy.org and tip your hat to Biker. And the reason we're talking about black hats and wearing black hats, maybe, Amy, you can tell us why we would be tipping a black hat, doing a selfie, and putting it on Justice4Amy.org?
Well, Biker had kind of an outfit of every day of wearing black shorts and a black hat, mostly. And for his celebration of life as a way to kind of give a nod to him, we all wore black hats just to kind of remember Biker by.
Well, there we go. We'll be tipping our hats.
Happy to support it, and thank you both.
Thank you and everybody, remember that we are a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and the government belongs to us. And it's our responsibility to ensure that it serves us with integrity.
None of this is intended to be legal advice. The information herein is based on materials submitted to the courts, provided by local authorities, covered by press and media, and private investigation into the opinions of the participants and hosts. To the best of their knowledge, the information contained herein is correct and true.
And we'll see you next week with an update.
Looking forward to it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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