Late one October night on the Opal Cliffs of California, a gang of armed intruders forced their way into the oceanside estate of tech millionaire and weed tycoon Tushar Atre. A witness reported the CEO was forced into his white BMW at gunpoint — and hours later, his body was discovered at his rural compound in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
That was six years ago. The longstanding investigation has taken many twists and turns, landing two of Atre’s former employees life in prison without parole. Another worker is currently on trial, and one more is scheduled to appear in court later this year.
But as witnesses and associates tell it, Atre was far from your typical sweetheart tech magnate. As local publication SFGate reports, the six-year investigation has helped uncover the brutal working conditions his employees suffered under his hand, revealing a grim justification for the slaying.
During the trial of Kaleb Charters, a manual laborer at one of Atre’s marijuana farms, a former manager named Sam Borghese testified that Atre maintained a “hostile, fear-based” working culture. Borghese told the court that Atre — who had a net worth of some $16 million — regularly withheld his worker’s paychecks, dangling petty grievances over their heads at random.
The employee further testified that Atre would regularly berate the workers whose labor built his fortunes, and fire them when they didn’t show him the proper respect. Borghese reportedly answered over 100 questions related to Atre’s cruelty, adding that his workers made a habit of “joking” about teaming up to rob and hurt the CEO.
Borghese recalled one particularly striking incident involving a struggle over a $1,400 paycheck. Kaleb, along with another defendant named Stephen Nicholas Lindsay, had spent the past two weeks working “from sunrise to sunset” without pay, according to local reporting, only to finally discover their long-delayed checks had been bounced by Atre.
For his part, Borghese said the multi-millionaire suspected the duo had failed to return the keys to one of his farm trucks. Denying them pay was his way of dolling out a little workplace discipline, though the keys would later be found at the farm.
When the Charters returned to demand the checks they had worked for, Atre scoffed, saying they had wasted his time. Borghese testified the CEO said he “was worth thousands an hour — because he makes millions — so anyone who wastes his time is costing money,” SFGate reported.
Finally, Atre caved and offered to write two new paychecks, but on one condition: Lindsay and Charters had to perform between 300-500 pushups each, which they did. “They were humiliated in front of people doing pushups,” Santa Cruz County detective Ethan Rumrill testified.
The alleged kidnapping and murder happened a few weeks later, when Lindsay and Charters, along with their gun-owning friend Joshua Camps, allegedly approached Atre’s compound to make good on their jokes of robbing him. Per SFGate, Charters’ defense attorney is now arguing the 18-year-old farmhand had unfortunately become wrapped up in a botched robbery that turned deadly.
How the rest plays out remains to be seen. Lindsay is one of the two who’s already been sentenced to life in prison — while Charters currently faces charges including robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, and homicide.
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