The former CEO of Granite Recovery Centers, a network of drug and alcohol treatment centers in New Hampshire, was arrested on Friday for allegedly orchestrated a plot to track journalists, the Ministry of Justice said in a declaration.
Eric Spofford, 40, was accused of having targeted journalists employed by public radio of New Hampshire (NHPR) in retaliation to publish an investigation This would have revealed multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against him when he was CEO of the recovery centers. Spofford opened the granite recovery centers after having struggled with heroin dependence and transformed the company into the largest treatment network of the New Hampshire drug addiction.
The NHPR article caused a sensation, attracting the attention of local and national media, said officials. Spofford publicly denied allegations and later continued the public radio station For defamation. He claimed the public radio station laid A “successful song” against him. He said in his complaint that, following the investigation, the financial institutions refused to do business with him, the sellers suddenly resigned to work with his businesses and that he was far from working with politicians from the New Hampshire.
He declared in court that he did not feel comfortable in his country of origin after the publication of the investigation.
A New Hampshire licensed judge The Spofford trial in 2023.
The Ministry of Justice said that Spofford had designed a plan starting in March or around March 2022 or continuing at least in May 2022, to harass and terrorize the journalist who wrote the article, the journalist’s immediate family members, as well as an editor in response and reprisals for the station reports.
He would have hired his close friend Eric Labarge to vandalize and pulverize the houses of the victims with large rocks and bricks, obscene and threatening language.
“Just the beginning” was paint by spray on the journalist’s house, according to at Wbur radio station.
Spofford would have paid $ 20,000 in cash at Labarge, would have given him the addresses and instructions of the victims on how to harass them. Labarge, in turn, hired Tucker Cockerline, Keenan Saniatan and Michael Waselchuck to carry out the harassment campaign.
Labarge, Cockerline, Saniatan and Waselchuck were charged, found guilty and sentenced to prison for their involvement in the harassment campaign.
Spofford said He sold Granite Recovery Centers for nine figures in 2021. CBS News contacted Spofford to comment on its arrest.
He is expected to appear on Monday before the Boston Federal Court.
New Hampshire’s president and head of public radio management Jim Schachter said everyone in his team was grateful to the US prosecutor’s office and the FBI for prosecuting the case against Spofford and his associates.
“The attacks on journalists have no place in American life,” Schachter told CBS News in a statement. “His attempt to silence the reports of the NHPR on the abuses of power in the drug recovery industry failed, as is the attempt to regain freedom of the press.”
