Federal agents arrested David “Max” Leidermann in Santa Monica and transported him to Nebraska, where he has spent more than three and a half years behind bars awaiting trial.
Max Leidermann’s story began in and keeps returning to Los Angeles.
Leidermann, 51, had lived in LA for more than 30 years and had never been to Nebraska. That all changed in April 2023, when Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents arrested him at a Starbucks in Santa Monica and transported him more than 1,500 miles away to face a federal cannabis trafficking and money-laundering prosecution.
More than three years later, Leidermann, a first-time offender remains in custody in Nebraska without bond, awaiting trial. He has not yet been convicted of the charges against him.
From behind bars, he has had limited access to the extensive discovery he needs to review in order to assist in his own defense. The facility where he is being held does not allow visitors and has no outdoor recreation yard.
Recent developments involving the HSI agent who signed the original criminal complaint against Leidermann raise questions that should matter in Los Angeles.
HSI Special Agent Craig Allrich was the agent who signed off on the April 2023 complaint against Leidermann and his alleged co-conspirators. In that affidavit, Allrich assembled the government’s evidence and told a federal magistrate why he believed probable cause existed to charge the men.
Since then, Allrich’s work has come under scrutiny in another federal case after bystander video reportedly contradicted critical allegations contained in an affidavit he signed.
There is another connection much closer to home.
James Reja — Leidermann’s alleged business partner and a man named alongside him in the original federal complaint — died during an attempt by federal agents to arrest him in Los Angeles in November 2023.
Reja’s widow filed a federal lawsuit last month containing serious allegations against Allrich arising from the same investigation that produced Leidermann’s prosecution.
While those allegations have not been proven, and none of these developments establishes that Allrich fabricated evidence against Leidermann. But, after an LA resident has spent more than three years incarcerated in Nebraska without having been convicted, the lawsuit raises a question that deserves examination: How much of the federal case against Max Leidermann can be independently verified and how much depends upon how investigators characterized witnesses, recordings and other evidence?
A Federal Case Takes an LA Man to Nebraska
The federal investigation that resulted in three years of pretrial detention did not begin with Leidermann. It developed from traffic stop records and alleged cannabis shipments involving other individuals in Nebraska. Investigators eventually focused on FastBox, a California logistics business that federal authorities alleged was being used to transport cannabis and cash across the country. The government’s own complaint describes an HSI-recorded conversations involving Leidermann and Reja and that in August 2020, a cooperating defendant met with both men in Los Angeles during a meeting monitored and recorded by federal investigators.
On April 11, 2023, Allrich signed the criminal complaint against Leidermann, Reja and a third man Eric Thibodo.
Shortly after, Leidermann was arrested in California and taken to Nebraska.
Recently the questions surrounding Allrich’s integrity intensified following an unrelated federal prosecution involving Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco.
An amended affidavit signed by Allrich described a violent confrontation with immigration agents. Among other things, the affidavit alleged Hurtado-Cariaco placed a female federal agent in a chokehold — an allegation that led to an attempted-murder charge.
Allrich had not personally witnessed the arrest or the purported assault.
Then a bystander video surfaced.
According to Hurtado-Cariaco’s subsequent sentencing filing, the recordings did not show him choking the female agent. Instead, they showed federal agents placing him into chokeholds. The defense also challenged an allegation that Hurtado-Cariaco removed a ballistic plate from the agent’s vest, contending that the video showed the plate falling out when the agent lost her footing.
The attempted-murder charge was eventually abandoned. A federal judge later sharply criticized the government’s presentation of the encounter while stopping short of finding that Allrich intentionally lied. The court raised serious concerns about the way the facts had been presented. There has been no judicial finding that Craig Allrich deliberately fabricated evidence. But the episode demonstrated something fundamental to any criminal prosecution:
There can be an enormous difference between what the evidence shows and what an investigator says the evidence shows. That detail becomes particularly important when examining the case of a man who has already spent years behind bars.
What Does the Evidence Against Max Actually Show?
The original complaint against Leidermann contains physical seizures and other evidence, but portions of the prosecution’s narrative concerning Leidermann rely heavily on interpretation and cooperating witnesses. One passage has become particularly noteworthy. Allrich described text and audio messages obtained from seized employee phones and concluded that FastBox personnel were operating under Leidermann’s direction. The affidavit cites voice comparisons and identification by a cooperating defendant.
But Allrich also pointed to the “stern tone” of communications attributed to Leidermann as part of his basis for concluding that Leidermann was “in charge of the organization,” an assertion that is a shaky conclusion at best. Another cooperating defendant supplied one of the most extraordinary numbers in the complaint: an estimate that Leidermann and Reja’s organization produced more than one million pounds of cannabis between 1998 and 2014. The complaint does not explain the methods of how that enormous figure was calculated. Such specifications matter when one million pounds of cannabis is in question.
Now allegations about the treatment of cooperating witnesses have emerged from another case tied directly to this same investigation.
Another LA Man Who Never Made It to Court
James Reja was not a distant figure in Leidermann’s case. Federal authorities alleged that he was Leidermann’s business partner. He was named alongside Leidermann in Allrich’s original complaint. On November 13, 2023, federal agents went to arrest Reja in Los Angeles. Reja died during that operation. His widow, Francesca Tosti, subsequently filed a federal wrongful-death and civil-rights lawsuit containing allegations concerning Allrich and the investigation surrounding her husband. Her complaint includes allegations about the shooting, the handling of evidence and federal efforts involving the Reja family’s property.
An issue arose during the proceedings: there was no body-camera footage. According to Tosti’s Second Amended Complaint, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s investigative report states that none of the federal agents involved in Reja’s arrest were equipped with body-worn cameras. The lawsuit alleges that U.S. Marshals Service policy required its agents to wear and activate body cameras during planned arrests. Without that footage, critical portions of what happened before and during the fatal encounter are left to witness accounts, surveillance video and the agents’ own descriptions.
Another allegation could be particularly significant to Leidermann’s case. Tosti alleges that a cooperating witness who provided information about Reja’s alleged historical involvement in the trafficking organization was an immigrant without lawful status and that Allrich threatened the witness and his family with deportation unless the witness provided information investigators wanted. Her lawsuit also alleges Allrich threatened to deport Tosti’s housekeeper and her husband unless she supplied specified information.
What Did the Witnesses Actually Say?
This is where the separate cases begin to intersect. In Hurtado-Cariaco’s case, video reportedly allowed the court to compare the government’s description of an encounter with an independent recording of what actually occurred. The Tosti lawsuit raises a related question about the Leidermann-Reja investigation: What did the witnesses actually say, and how were their statements ultimately characterized by investigators? For Leidermann, that means the original recordings matter. The complete interviews with cooperating defendants matter. Any discussions involving witnesses’ immigration status matter. Promises of leniency matter. Complete message threads matter. The methodology used to identify Leidermann’s voice matters. The basis for the million-pound estimate matters. Every place where an investigator summarized another person’s words deserves to be compared with what that person actually said.
This is not simply a Nebraska story. The man at the center of it lived in Los Angeles for more than three decades. Federal investigators monitored activity in Los Angeles. HSI agents arrested Leidermann at a Starbucks in Santa MonicaHis alleged partner died during a federal arrest operation in Los Angeles. His widow is using the federal courts to seek answers about what happened during the same investigation.
Meanwhile, Leidermann remains incarcerated more than 1,500 miles from the city he called home. He is being held in a facility that does not have a yard nor does it allow visitors.
The issue is not whether every allegation in Tosti’s lawsuit is true. The question is much narrower: Do these developments provide sufficient reason to independently examine the evidence and representations used to build the federal case against an LA resident who has now spent more than three years awaiting trial?
There is compelling reason to ask.
An affidavit tells a court what an investigator says the evidence shows.
The underlying recordings, interviews, messages and records answer the more important question:
Does the evidence actually show it?
For Max Leidermann, that question has become increasingly urgent.
Los Angeles is where he spent more than three decades of his life. Max Leidermann is still waiting for his day in court.
More than three years after his arrest, Leidermann remains jailed without bond in Nebraska awaiting trial. The HSI agent who signed the complaint against him has since faced judicial scrutiny over how evidence was characterized in an unrelated federal case, while a lawsuit stemming from the same investigation as Leidermann’s contains allegations of witness coercion and raises additional questions about the conduct of federal agents. Leidermann has not been convicted, and the evidence underlying the government’s case, including recordings, witness interviews and communications summarized by investigators, has yet to be tested before a jury.
