Former Sheriff Gets Probation, Must Repay $113,000 to Swindled Woodbury Man

A former Minnesota sheriff was recently sentenced to 20 years of probation and must repay $113,000 to a Woodbury man he bilked in an airplane-purchasing scam.

Von F. Thompson, 56, of Mora, Minn., was previously found guilty of scamming a David Pietsch, of Woodbury, in June 2008.

Pietsch told authorities that he had become friends with Thompson and was persuaded to loan him money to buy, repair and resell an airplane for a 10-15 percent return, according to the complaint. He also loaned Thompson money for motorcycles.

But Pietsch said Thompson never repaid any of the funds, and investigators found that the plane was inoperable, the complaint says. See the attached PDF for more details.

Thompson—who was a sheriff from 1983 to 1999—was convicted in 2010 for a similar scheme that bilked a 91-year-old Mora man out of $172,000, according to a Star Tribune report.

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