TORONTO — A suspended police officer who doubled as a controversial landlord is behind bars after abandoning appeals of his conviction and sentence for stealing what he thought was cocaine worth as much as $540,000 in a botched RCMP sting.

Sheldon Cook, a Cambridge resident, is a Peel Regional Police constable and Waterloo Region landlord who in 2010 was sentenced to more than five years in prison on seven criminal convictions.

Cook, 47, had been free on bail after he launched appeals immediately after the convictions.

His case was set to be heard Monday morning at the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto. Instead, the court was told Cook abandoned his appeals, surrendered to police on Sunday night and began serving his sentence.

Cook had been appealing the convictions and the sentence of five years and eight months. The prosecution, meanwhile, had planned its own appeal. It wanted a steeper sentence. At trial, the prosecution had sought 12 years.

Prosecutor Nick Devlin said Monday that Cook negotiated with the prosecution to drop its appeal if he abandoned his appeals and surrendered.

Cook is at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton but will probably be transferred to a long-term prison in the Kingston area.

One tenant who had a bad experience with Cook as a landlord was pleased to hear Cook is in jail.

"I'm very happy to hear that he can't rip anyone off anymore for at least the next five years," said Christopher Boyce, who lives at 95 Benton St. in Kitchener.

Cook has been on the wrong side of the law twice.

He was charged in 2005 after the RCMP tracked a shipment of what Cook believed was 15 kilograms of cocaine. The substance was a flourlike substance meant to look like cocaine. The fake drugs, shipped from Peru, went missing at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and turned up at Cook's Cambridge home.

Cook insisted he was just following orders when he took the bricks home. A search of his home also found marijuana.

He was convicted of unlawfully attempting to possess an illegal substance for the purpose of trafficking, three counts of breach of trust, theft, unlawful possession of stolen property and possession of marijuana.

As a result of Cook's arrest, the federal Justice Department decided not to prosecute at least six drug cases involving Cook as the arresting officer.

In 2004, CFL player Orlando Bowen was out celebrating a new contract with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats when, he alleged, he was badly beaten by two plainclothes Peel police officers. He said one of them was Cook.

Bowen alleged the officers planted drugs on him and charged him with assaulting police and possessing cocaine. He was acquitted after Cook was arrested on the charges involving the fake cocaine.

The attack left Bowen with a concussion that forced him to retire from the CFL.

Bowen later filed a $14-million lawsuit against Peel police, which was settled out of court. The allegations against Cook were not proven in court.

Cook is still a police officer. He received full pay after his arrest in 2005 up to his conviction in 2010. Since then, he has been suspended without pay. Now that the appeals have been dropped, Cook will face a police disciplinary hearing where he could lose his job.

Cook's appeals dragged on for four years in part due to lengthy arguments over the admissibility of evidence suggesting two of Cook's supervisors were guilty of decades-long misconduct. Cook had claimed he acted under orders from those officers.

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The evidence arose after Cook was convicted. The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled the evidence could be introduced but suggested it probably wouldn't exonerate Cook.

Cook developed a bad reputation as a landlord in Kitchener.

In September, townhouse tenants at 93½ Benton St. said they went five weeks without hot water.

Tenants at 95 Benton St. complained of a months-long sewage leak in their townhouse.

The Landlord and Tenant Board ruled that Cook wasn't to blame for the lack of hot water but found he was at fault for not fixing the sewage leak.

Both sets of tenants had said they paid June rent but Cook denied it. The board ruled that they did pay him.

Although he was exonerated for the hot water problem, Cook was charged by the Ontario Ministry of Housing with deliberately withholding a vital service. His case is in court on Monday.

Three people have alleged they gave Cook deposits for townhouses or rooms in Waterloo Region but got nothing in return. Two of the disputes have been resolved privately.

Last month, the Landlord and Tenant Board threw out a demand by Cook that the tenants at 95 Benton St. pay $400 to clean up their children's sidewalk chalk drawings.

One tenant came to Cook's defence. Dennis Claveau of 99 Benton St. credited him with taking quick action to fix a power outage caused by ice that fell off the roof and ripped electrical wires off the side of the building.

The electrical company that did the work threw cold water on that story by saying Cook had still not paid the bill.

How tenants pay rent probably won't change now that Cook is in jail. Claveau said he sends money electronically through his bank to Cook's company, Topeco Capital Holdings Inc., and he hasn't been given any different instructions. Cook's wife, Rhonda, is also involved in the business.

Before going to jail, Cook served as superintendent of the Benton Street townhouses. Claveau said he has been told a new superintendent is in charge of the property. He said he has been given contact information.