Former Florida County Sheriff Turned Drug Dealer Turned Snitch Finally Heads to jail
Former Manatee County Sheriff’s deputy James “Jack” Choate is headed off to jail at long last – though many would agree that the sentence is long overdue.
A Deputy Sheriff in Florida from July 1995 through November 2011, Choate’s record as a law enforcement agent is spotty at best, but he was able to power through this career for almost 20 years before retiring early and moving into a life of crime.
After his retirement from the force, Jack decided to become an anabolic steroid dealer that supplied performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to many of his former colleagues in the Sheriff’s office, quickly becoming the “go to” source for anabolic steroids in all of Manatee County. He continued his operation for three solid years without drawing any attention from the law (mostly because he was selling performance-enhancing drugs to law enforcement agents who are all too happy to turn a blind eye to his operation), but after an undercover sting operation from the state police in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) caught him red-handed he turned state’s evidence against his former friends and coworkers in exchange for a get out of jail free card.
Working extensively with the DEA, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, and a number of statewide organizations that had been in on the 18 month long investigation, Jack dropped the dime on more than a dozen of his close friends, coworkers, and colleagues in exchange for a completely clean criminal record.
The information that he provided these government agencies with would go on to lead to the investigation, arrest, and conviction of three deputy sheriffs, two firefighters, a personal trainer, and four private citizens – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He provided his entire customer list (a list he maintained digitally just in case he was ever thought by government officials) to the DEA, and they are still processing some of the information and have open investigations for more than a dozen extra cases.
In 2014, however, Choate was brought before the judge and pled guilty to a single count of the sale of controlled substances and two counts of the possession of controlled substances with the intent to sell – though the judge gave him two years of probation and 100 hours worth of community service because of the sweetheart deal he had brokered behind the scenes.
Unfortunately for him, the terms of his probation warrant so easy to meet with the kind of lifestyle that he enjoyed leading, and about 12 months later he violated his probation and is set to head off to jail – spending time with the same individuals that he helped to put away during his career as well as those that he has recently flipped on in the steroid investigation.
Choate has been sentenced to a 60 day jail sentence that began on September 24, 2015, though because of an interesting wrinkle in photo law he has yet to actually be convicted of a crime. This means his criminal record will remain spotless (at least for the time being), which means that he’ll be able to leave his prison sentence without having to deal with any repercussions stemming from this day of the river.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the rest of this case unfolds, especially since the DEA and other Florida agencies have yet to completely close the case on all of the individuals that Choate helped them investigate. As mentioned above, there are more than a dozen different cases still being investigated, and some of them will likely require the cooperation of the man that help them get the ball rolling in the first place.
Source:
Johnson, E. (September 21, 2015). Former deputy informant in steroids case gets jail time. Retrieved from http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20150921/article/150929955
This entry was posted in Blog on October 6, 2015 by Admin.
Former Manatee County Sheriff’s deputy James “Jack” Choate is headed off to jail at long last – though many would agree that the sentence is long overdue.
A Deputy Sheriff in Florida from July 1995 through November 2011, Choate’s record as a law enforcement agent is spotty at best, but he was able to power through this career for almost 20 years before retiring early and moving into a life of crime.
After his retirement from the force, Jack decided to become an anabolic steroid dealer that supplied performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to many of his former colleagues in the Sheriff’s office, quickly becoming the “go to” source for anabolic steroids in all of Manatee County. He continued his operation for three solid years without drawing any attention from the law (mostly because he was selling performance-enhancing drugs to law enforcement agents who are all too happy to turn a blind eye to his operation), but after an undercover sting operation from the state police in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) caught him red-handed he turned state’s evidence against his former friends and coworkers in exchange for a get out of jail free card.
Working extensively with the DEA, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, and a number of statewide organizations that had been in on the 18 month long investigation, Jack dropped the dime on more than a dozen of his close friends, coworkers, and colleagues in exchange for a completely clean criminal record.
The information that he provided these government agencies with would go on to lead to the investigation, arrest, and conviction of three deputy sheriffs, two firefighters, a personal trainer, and four private citizens – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He provided his entire customer list (a list he maintained digitally just in case he was ever thought by government officials) to the DEA, and they are still processing some of the information and have open investigations for more than a dozen extra cases.
In 2014, however, Choate was brought before the judge and pled guilty to a single count of the sale of controlled substances and two counts of the possession of controlled substances with the intent to sell – though the judge gave him two years of probation and 100 hours worth of community service because of the sweetheart deal he had brokered behind the scenes.
Unfortunately for him, the terms of his probation warrant so easy to meet with the kind of lifestyle that he enjoyed leading, and about 12 months later he violated his probation and is set to head off to jail – spending time with the same individuals that he helped to put away during his career as well as those that he has recently flipped on in the steroid investigation.
Choate has been sentenced to a 60 day jail sentence that began on September 24, 2015, though because of an interesting wrinkle in photo law he has yet to actually be convicted of a crime. This means his criminal record will remain spotless (at least for the time being), which means that he’ll be able to leave his prison sentence without having to deal with any repercussions stemming from this day of the river.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the rest of this case unfolds, especially since the DEA and other Florida agencies have yet to completely close the case on all of the individuals that Choate helped them investigate. As mentioned above, there are more than a dozen different cases still being investigated, and some of them will likely require the cooperation of the man that help them get the ball rolling in the first place.
Source:
Johnson, E. (September 21, 2015). Former deputy informant in steroids case gets jail time. Retrieved from http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20150921/article/150929955
This entry was posted in Blog on October 6, 2015 by Admin.
