Do you have the right stuff to become a trooper in the Massachusetts State Police?
Have you ever asked yourself, what kind of background do you need to get “on the job” and make $151,000 a year like Trooper Leigha Genduso was making, at least until last week, when she was suspended?
The MSP is now claiming that it somehow knew absolutely nothing about Trooper Genduso’s admitted sordid criminal background as a drug dealer, drug abuser, money launderer and perjurer. That’s the staties’ story, and they’re sticking to it.
So this morning, as a public service, let us examine the remarkable resume that Leigha Genduso brought to the table before she joined the MSP. She will answer your questions in her own words, from the day in 2007 that she testified under a grant of immunity at the federal drug-dealing trial of her boyfriend.
Less than a year after she copped to all of the crimes listed below, she was hired as a dispatcher for the State Police. She was sworn in as a trooper in 2014. Can somebody say nationwide search?
Let’s go to the questions.
Trooper Genduso, what are some of the perks of living with a drug kingpin?
“I never paid rent. We would go out to eat; grocery shopping. He paid for my cell phone; it was very overdue. Things of that extent…”
Before you became a drug dealer, Trooper, what was your job?
“I was cocktail waitressing… at a bar called Scuttlebutts in Salem.”
Grand juries – what did you do when you were subpoenaed to appear?
“Actually, I pled the Fifth every single time they asked a question.”
As a member of the drug ring, Trooper, what were your duties when the hundreds of pounds of marijuana were delivered to your convicted-felon boyfriend?
“A lot of times I helped him break up the bales to be able to put them into pounds.”
How much did the bales weigh, Trooper?
“It depended. It depended on the amounts per bale. For example, one would be 17 ½ pounds. Another one could be 10 pounds. So sometimes he would get 20 bales. Another one could be 10 pounds.”
How did you prefer to break up the bales of cannabis sativa for retail sale?
“We would usually take, like, a long straight-edge screwdriver to break open the bales because they were very compact and hard to break up. And we would then break up the buds and put them into one-pound bags.”
In your pre-law enforcement career as a drug dealer, what was your profit margin on that hundred-plus pounds of standard-grade weed you personally sold?
“I was making at least $200 a pound.”
But weren’t you making more selling the primo stuff, “High Bud,” the hydroponic cannabis?
“A lot more, 600, 700.”
As a drug dealer, you were doing a lot of drugs, right, in addition to smoking marijuana how often?
“Basically every day… I used Xanax, Wellbutrin, possibly Vicodin… The Xanox I would take to sleep. Wellbrutin for, like, depression.”
What about when the G-men ask you about dates of certain crimes you committed?
“See, I’m afraid to actually state dates because I don’t want to get perjurized (sic) for something I don’t recall correctly.”
In the underworld, when your drug-dealer boyfriend gets arrested and gives you control of a box stuffed with $275,000 cash, what it is permissible for you, the moll, to spend the dough on?
“I got my wisdom teeth extracted… car payments, living situations, drinks, whatever…. I even brought his parents out to dinner once.”
When counting the hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains that you made from selling drugs, Trooper Genduso, what did you prefer – hand-counting the cash or using a ‘money machine?’
“It depended. Sometimes it would go through the money machine. Other times it would be as simple as five grand… To count a large number of bills at a time… it’s a lot easier.”
Tell us about depositing your boyfriend’s drug profits in the bank? Were there any special techniques you used?
“It was always under the sum of $10,000… He would give me a bank-deposit slip with, most of the time, $9,000 in cash, and I would go to the bank in Middleton and deposit it…I asked him why it was never over $10,000… Because anything over $10,000 will get you reported by the bank to the IRS.”
How many times did you do this – deposit smaller amounts of cash to avoid being reported to the feds for money-laundering? Twenty times?
“Yes. Estimated 20 occasions.”
Before you joined the MSP, did your drug-kingpin boyfriend teach you how to pay bills with all the profits you made from the drug ring?
“He told me to pay through money orders… I’d go to different places, Post Office, Honey Farms. I’d get money orders up to $500 apiece… I was very worried about paying for bills with cash through money orders.”
When you told your thug boyfriend you were worried about the money orders, Trooper, what did he tell you?
“He said, quote-unquote, ‘You can’t get in trouble for paying bills.’”
When you were the dealer’s moll in North Reading, Trooper, why did you put the house phone in your name rather than the hood’s?
“Well, basically, if any law enforcements (sic) were to try to tap into the phone line under my existing name, it would be a lot harder than it would be under his name.”
Your thug boyfriend set up a website so that his fellow hoods could expose suspected police informants. It’s called WhosARat.com? Who came up with that name, Trooper?
“Oh, I did! I said the name as a joke and he stuck with it. That was me!”
This is your Massachusetts State Police!