The government’s case against Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins rests on one man, and on Friday that man finally took the stand.
Frank Perullo, president and co-founder of Ascend Wellness, testified for close to three hours on direct examination in federal court in Boston. He is the person prosecutors say was pressured. He is testifying under an immunity agreement. And until Friday, five trial days in, the jury had heard the government’s theory described by everyone except the person at the center of it.
He has not yet been cross-examined. That matters more than anything he said.
What he testified to
Perullo told the jury that Tompkins approached him in the summer of 2020, before Ascend went public, asking to buy in.
The quotes he attributed to the sheriff were direct. “I want to get in on the IPO, I want to be able to make cannabis money.” When Perullo pushed back, he says Tompkins invoked what he had done for the company: “I helped you get that spot on Friend Street, you wouldn’t be this big company without me.” Friend Street is Ascend’s flagship Boston dispensary near TD Garden, and the company’s former chief financial officer testified earlier that day that the address was considered a prize, one of the first major downtown dispensaries in a Northeast city.
Perullo said he tried to turn it down. “I didn’t think it was right because he was an elected official that we were doing a program with. I didn’t think it was something I thought was possible, or something we should do.” He described being “dismissive” and telling the sheriff it was not really possible.
He said he relented for a specific reason, and the reason is the government’s whole theory. He worried the sheriff’s reentry program would collapse, and that Ascend would have to find another community partner, which would “delay our opening quite a bit.” As he put it: “At that point, the company just needed to open dispensaries. It had taken going on three years.”
The partnership mattered because of paperwork. To operate in Massachusetts, Ascend needed a positive impact plan filed with state regulators, committing the company to employ people from communities harmed by marijuana enforcement. The sheriff’s department program was part of how Ascend proposed to meet that obligation. On paper, Ascend planned to hire five or six people a year out of it.
The moment the prosecution built toward
Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Chao put Ascend’s own code of business conduct in front of the witness. It requires that “higher standards of conduct apply when government officials or government employees are involved.”
Chao asked whether Perullo was following that code when he agreed to sell shares to the sheriff.
“I was not.”
That answer does two jobs at once, and it is worth seeing both. It tells the jury the transaction was irregular enough that the seller knew it violated his own company’s rules, which supports the government’s framing. It also establishes that the witness broke those rules himself, which is precisely where the defense will start Monday.
Why the cross-examination is the whole case
Perullo is testifying under immunity. He entered a cooperation agreement after FBI agents came to his door around August or September of 2024. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg told the jury in his opening that the government’s case “boils down to the uncorroborated testimony” of a man testifying under those terms.
That framing has been strengthened by four days of testimony from people who were not pressured. Ascend co-founder Abner Kurtin said he never discussed any pressure with Perullo and never heard threats. A former employee said nobody suggested the company’s license depended on the sheriff’s goodwill. Ascend’s social equity chief said she faced no pressure to preserve the partnership.
None of that is fatal to the government. A person who feels leaned on by a sheriff does not necessarily tell his colleagues, and prosecutors will argue that the pressure ran to Perullo alone. But it does leave the case standing on one witness, which is exactly the structure the defense wants the jury to see.
There is also a relationship problem underneath all of it. Perullo is not a stranger to Tompkins. He was his campaign consultant. He helped run Tompkins’s 2014 special election, set up an organization to support it, and testified that he “worked pretty hard to make sure he won the race.” They had dinner together. They went to the movies. Weinberg’s opening leaned on a friendship of more than forty years between Tompkins and Andrea Cabral, Tompkins’s predecessor as sheriff, whom Perullo later installed as Ascend’s chief executive in Massachusetts. It was Cabral, by Perullo’s own testimony, who first suggested the partnership with the sheriff’s department.
The defense will ask why a man who spent years electing Tompkins and building a business around his predecessor was so afraid of him.
What the government actually has to prove
Tompkins is charged with two counts of extortion under color of official right, under the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951. He has pleaded not guilty.
The phrase is a term of art and it is narrower than it sounds. The government must prove he obtained property he was not entitled to, and that the payment was connected to his official position rather than to an ordinary business relationship. Under Evans v. United States, a public official does not have to make a threat or demand for the offense to be complete; it is enough that he accepted a payment knowing it was given in return for official action.
So the fight is not really about whether Tompkins bought stock. That is undisputed. It is about whether a sheriff invoking what he had done for a company, to a longtime friend who needed his program, is a man leveraging his office or a man overselling himself to someone he had known for decades.
The second count concerns what happened later. Prosecutors allege that when the shares lost value, Tompkins demanded his money back.
What happens this week
Cross-examination of Perullo resumes Monday, and the government is expected to rest the same day.
The defense is expected to call several witnesses, including Cabral. Whether Tompkins testifies in his own defense has not been reported, and it is the sort of decision that often is not made until the government closes.
Judge Myong Joun has said he wants the case in the jury’s hands by the end of next week.
Expect a Rule 29 motion for judgment of acquittal when the government rests. Those are routine, they are usually denied, and a denial signals almost nothing about the eventual verdict.
A note on what this is not
Tompkins has been on leave from the sheriff’s office since his arrest in August 2025. He has pleaded not guilty. Nothing described here has been proven, and a witness’s account under an immunity agreement is testimony, not fact, until a jury decides what to make of it.
He was in court Friday with a small group of supporters, shaking hands and embracing a few of them. He spent most of the day looking straight ahead. During the portion of Perullo’s testimony about the investment request, according to reporting from the courtroom, he turned his chair to face the witness stand and watched.
This article will be updated as the trial proceeds. General legal information, not legal advice.
Common questions
What is Steven Tompkins charged with?
Two felony counts of extortion under color of official right, under the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951. Prosecutors allege he pressured Ascend Wellness into selling him $50,000 in pre-IPO stock and later demanded a refund when the shares lost value. He has pleaded not guilty.
Who is Frank Perullo?
President and co-founder of Ascend Wellness, and the government’s central witness. He is a former Democratic political consultant who helped run campaigns for both Tompkins and his predecessor Andrea Cabral. He is testifying under an immunity agreement entered after FBI agents contacted him in 2024.
Is Tompkins still the sheriff?
He has been on a leave of absence since his arrest in August 2025. An indictment does not remove a Massachusetts sheriff from office.
When will the jury get the case?
Judge Myong Joun has said he wants the case handed to the jury by the end of the week of August 31.
Does extortion require a threat?
Not under this theory. Under Evans v. United States, a public official need not demand or threaten; accepting a payment knowing it was given in return for official action can suffice. What the government must show is a connection between the payment and the office.