Three weeks later, Dayspring and his business associates addressed the Board of Supervisors during the public comment period, urging the county to again extend the abeyance. Dayspring said he handed Hill $5,000 in cash outside a restaurant in Avila Beach not long after the vote, according to the plea agreement.Īt another dinner in Pismo Beach, Dayspring said he picked up the tab and passed Hill an additional $5,000 in cash after they finished eating. The next day the Board of Supervisors voted 5 to 0 to extend the abeyances. Extension of timeframe seems pretty reasonable and probably no one else in until everyone has been deemed complete.” In another message, Dayspring wrote that he had invested in several properties but warned that if he was not “deemed complete” and didn’t receive conditional-use permits, “I don’t get my ownership in the land.”Īccording to the plea agreement, Hill replied: “Got it. He discussed with the supervisor the importance of keeping the abeyance in place, writing in a text message, “It’s really important u guys extend the timeframe for submission and don’t allow other people in yet,” according to the plea agreement. Through 2018, Dayspring said he gave Hill $5,000 in cash and various “cannabis-related products,” his agreement says. The board voted unanimously to grant the abeyance to growers who had registered with the county before the ban went into effect, a decision that benefited Dayspring, his plea agreement says. In November 2017, the Board of Supervisors was weighing whether to offer certain growers an exemption, or abeyance, to a moratorium on cultivating marijuana on unincorporated county land. He paid Hill an additional $9,000 in cash through the following year, the plea agreement says. 25, having signed his plea agreement late last month.Ĭalifornia The world’s largest pot farms, and how Santa Barbara opened the doorĭayspring said in his plea agreement that, in exchange for bribes, Hill took official actions that benefited his marijuana ventures, such as voting in favor of exempting certain cultivators from a moratorium on growing marijuana on unincorporated land and opposing a potential ban on outdoor grows.ĭayspring said he began paying Hill in 2016, starting with three $3,000 money orders that the supervisor deposited in his personal account.
Helios “Bobby” Dayspring, 35, who owns marijuana farms and dispensaries up and down the Central Coast, will plead guilty to one count each of federal programs bribery and filing a false tax return, according to a plea agreement filed in federal court and unsealed this week.ĭayspring also agreed to pay $3.4 million in restitution - the amount he kept from the Internal Revenue Service by underreporting his income - and to cooperate with prosecutors and agents from the IRS and FBI who are said to be probing corruption in San Luis Obispo County.ĭayspring’s lawyer, Sandra Brown-Bodner, said her client “has fully accepted responsibility for his actions, has been cooperating and will continue to cooperate with the government.” He is scheduled to appear in court on Aug.
A high-profile figure in the Central Coast’s marijuana industry has agreed to plead guilty to bribing a San Luis Obispo County supervisor, the first charges to be made public in what a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles called “an ongoing public corruption investigation.”
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