Courtroom Drama: Bribery, the IRS, and a Cautionary Cannabis Tale
“Have you ever taken a bribe before?”
According to former IRS agent Paul Hurley, that wasn’t an uncommon query. He’d received it many times before. Taxpayers are curious. They tend to ask questions.
But as Hurley recounted the scene in federal court in Seattle last week, this time the ask was a little different. This time it would lead to an actual bribe exchanging hands.
The dramatic case of U.S. v. Paul G. Hurley, which played out in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour last week, represented a watershed moment in the short history of legal cannabis. It was one of the first times anyone in the industry had been arrested for a crime connected to the Internal Revenue Service’s onerous 280E rule. The twist here was that the cannabis seller wasn’t on trial. The federal agent was....
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