SANTA ANA, Calif. – A former attorney for rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight was sentenced Monday to about three years in federal prison — time he has already served — for taking $1.3 million in stolen tax refund checks and placing false liens on a federal judge and the warden of the jail in Los Angeles.
Thaddeus Julian Culpepper, 48, pleaded guilty in the stolen IRS checks case in September, and pleaded guilty in the false liens case on Oct. 5. Culpepper admitted passing U.S. Treasury checks bearing forged endorsements and two counts of retaliation against a federal judge or federal law enforcement officer by false claim.
U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney on Monday sentenced Culpepper to 37 months in federal prison. Because Culpepper filed a false lien against Carney, that case was assigned to U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who sentenced the defendant to a concurrent 30 months. But Culpepper, who has been out of custody from the Metropolitan Detention Center since September, will not have to serve any more time behind bars because he had credits from jail custody while awaiting trial in the two cases.
“I look forward to filing a full report with the state Bar,” Culpepper told City News Service after the sentencing.
Culpepper was placed on one year of supervised release in both cases.
He filed at least 17 IRS tax refund checks worth a total of about $1.3 million from April 2015 and August 2017 into his own accounts without permission, according to court records.
Culpepper is awaiting trial in Los Angeles Superior Court on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit subornation of perjury, conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice, and serving as an accessory after the fact to the 2015 killing of Terry Carter in Compton. Knight pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in Carter’s killing and was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
