George Harry Johnson is as hard and thorny as the desert lots he’s been peddling for more than 40 years.

His skin is baked brown and his hair burned yellow-white from 85 years under the Arizona sun, but he’s as resilient as a mesquite tree.

Johnson is a cutthroat businessman, a throwback to the sue-or-be-sued olden days of land development and water rights when there was no business deal that couldn’t spawn a whirling dust devil of lawsuits and counter suits.

The proof is in the state and federal court dockets, where Johnson's name makes regular appearances. Whether you sue him claiming he hasn't delivered clean water from his utilities or alleging he's reneging on a business deal, he’ll sue you right back.

He was fined millions of dollars for flouting environmental laws, flagrantly blading desert riparian areas, drilling wells without a permit, diverting waterways, and even infecting a herd of endangered bighorn sheep, according to court and regulatory records. He still turned a profit on the land.

And Johnson has had dealings on Arizona's darker side as far back as 1970.

It was then that he claimed to investigators, and later to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Crime, that he had illegally wiretapped a congressman and the soon-to-be murdered Arizona Republic reporter, Don Bolles, on behalf of racetrack owners.

But as documented in transcripts of congressional testimony, he painted himself as a whistleblower and walked away with immunity.

He’s been accused in years past of using his checkbook to pressure politicians and public servants to further his business interests, though never in criminal complaints.

Former Maricopa County Supervisor Andy Kunasek says he paid the price when he refused to use his influence to fix an environmental infraction for Johnson. According to the resultant lawsuit, which has been slow-walking through Superior Court since 2013, Johnson cut Kunasek out of a lucrative partnership.

“He just screwed me,” Kunasek said. “There’s no other way to put it: He stole it.”

Then on May 28, Johnson was named in an eight-count indictment in U.S. District Court in Phoenix alleging bribery, fraud and conspiracy. He and the others charged have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors and federal investigators believe Johnson paid $31,500 to an Arizona Corporation Commissioner, through a lobbyist, to grease approval of higher rates for his Pinal County water- and wastewater-utility company and to allow him to charge his personal income taxes to his utility customers through their rates.

The money, authorities allege, was funneled to the commissioner's wife through the lobbyist and an unnamed and "unindicted co-conspirator" over 10 months in 2011 and 2012.

According to the indictment, lobbyist Jim Norton acted as a conduit between Johnson and former commission chairman Gary Pierce. The indictment further alleged Pierce planned to buy a $350,000 land parcel with funds provided by Johnson, though it does not state whether that transaction took place, and the U.S. Attorney's Office would neither confirm nor deny.

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Only Johnson, Norton, Pierce and his wife have been charged. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to five years in prison for the conspiracy charge, 10 years for bribery and up to 20 years on the fraud charges. In addition, each conviction could bring a possible fine of up to $250,000.

Not everyone was surprised.

"More incidents of money under the table may not come to light, but the coziness and undue influence that George Johnson, APS and other utilities have had on the corporation commission should concern all Arizonans, whether you're a Republican, Democrat or Independent," said former Commissioner William Mundell.

A history of being quick to sue

George Johnson would not talk to The Arizona Republic for this story.

His website extols his proudest accomplishments, many of which bear his name.

He developed the Johnson Ranch housing community in San Tan Valley, and his Johnson Utilities provides water and wastewater services for tens of thousands of homes in Pinal County. He owns the La Camarilla Racquet, Fitness & Swim Club in Scottsdale.

“He has been involved in award-winning projects such as the Indian Bend Wash in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the El Conquistador Resort Hotel and Golf Course in Tucson, Arizona, which demonstrates his creative abilities and sensitivity to the needs of an area,” the site states.

SEE ALSO:Indicted utility owner steps away from management

Many of Johnson's former business associates and plaintiffs against him in court balked at speaking on the record about him because he is quick to sue.

Johnson is the son of Greek immigrants. His father, Harry Antonopoulos, came to the U.S. in 1912 and shipped out to France with the Army during World War I. He came to Phoenix in the 1920s, married, and had four children. In 1949, he changed the family name to Johnson.

The H.G. Johnson Produce Company farmed land in Mexico, and Johnson senior built the old Produce Terminal, which stood on what is now a vacant parking lot by the Phoenix Suns arena.

That part of town, centered at Second and Washington streets, was called "The Deuce." Rough and tumble, it comprised Phoenix’s Skid Row and Chinatown, a warren of warehouses, rail spurs and flophouses interspersed with the city’s downtown commercial hub.

George Johnson's younger brother, Nick, was described in local newspapers as a "Phoenix Playboy" and "the scion of a wealthy family." He'd had numerous run-ins with law enforcement by the time he reached 18, and had been involved in shootings and motor-vehicle deaths. That's how old he was in 1957, when he was found dead in a shallow grave in the desert north of Phoenix with a broken jaw and a skull full of shotgun pellets.

The Maricopa County sheriff described the murder as a "gangland ride." He'd disappeared after receiving a mysterious phone call. And as the scandal unfolded, police questioned "a shapely brunet" and prostitutes, and followed leads to a "vice resort" as they searched for the young man's strongbox and black book.

George Johnson followed in his father's footsteps and became a farmer. One newspaper article from the 1950s shows him standing nobly in a cantaloupe field near Gila Bend, promising a "revolution" in cantaloupe planting.

The Johnson company started building housing developments, strip malls and commercial properties. Johnson claimed to have started in the homebuilding business in the 1960s, but he detoured into some freelancing.

In 1970, at the request of friends in the Phoenix dog-racing industry, and with no training whatsoever, he became a private investigator. Two brothers who were part owners of the Phoenix racetrack along Washington Street hired him to look into a “conspiracy” to disrupt the racing business.

Johnson later claimed to have paid off bankers and phone-company employees to obtain the financial and phone records of the head of the state racing commission, then-Congressman Sam Steiger, and Republic reporter Don Bolles, who was murdered several years later while doing other investigations.

When the racetrack fired him as investigator, Johnson took the information to Steiger and to Bolles. He claimed that he had illegally wiretapped them, and others. The Republic published a four-day series about the wiretaps and investigation in September 1970. The racetrack owners sued the newspaper, Bolles and Johnson for defamation, seeking $20 million in damages.

Johnson responded in a manner that he would frequently deploy for the rest of his career: He sued right back.

The case dragged on, and over the course of it, the Superior Court judge granted Johnson immunity for the potentially criminal wiretaps.

But in May 1972, before the case had ended, Johnson testified in front of Congress, still claiming to have conducted the investigation and wiretaps at the behest of the racetrack owners. However, he never produced any wiretap tapes, saying that his apartment had been burglarized and only the illegal tapes had been taken.

One of the congressmen questioning him called Johnson “probably one of the slickest amateurs that I have seen ... and because apparently the fruit and produce business was slow or on strike, you decided to become engaged in tapping a congressman’s line and running an investigation on him as an amateur?”

Johnson responded that he had been misled, according to transcripts.

“Sir, in the beginning I was told that Congressman Steiger, the newspaper, and other interests were trying to hurt the (racetrack owners) and take their business,” he said. “And me, like a complete idiot, just jumped in without investigating. Here’s friends of mine being hurt and so I am going to help. And down the line I found out it was not so, sir.”

Johnson claimed that in order to make things right, he took the information to Steiger himself.

In later testimony, an attorney from the law firm Lewis and Roca, which represented the racetrack owners, informed committee members that Johnson had been fired as an investigator and that was when he changed sides. And before he took the information to Steiger, he had tried to take it to the attorney, not realizing that attorney represented other interests in the matter.

Johnson was one of numerous witnesses to testify at congressional hearings, which concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone on the wiretapping allegations. It also concluded racing interests in Arizona were not controlled by the mob.

In August 1973, the racetrack owners' libel claims against The Republic and Bolles were dismissed. So was Bolles' counterclaim.

The following December, the judge decided the case against Johnson in favor of the racetrack owners, but granted no monetary damages and threw out Johnson's countersuit as well.

Sued by federal and state regulators

Johnson pursued homebuilding and land development in the following decades.

During the 1990s, the Arizona State Land Department was selling off state trust land in Scottsdale and north Phoenix for a song. Developers turned that cheap land into the most expensive communities in the greater Phoenix area.

George Johnson had the vision to imagine housing communities farther south in the undeveloped desert and abandoned farmlands between Phoenix and Florence. And that was the origin of Johnson Ranch, which now boasts more than 6,000 homes and 80,000 residents near Queen Creek, in the area now known as San Tan Valley.

Johnson also had the foresight to soak up the exclusive rights to provide potable water and wastewater services for large swaths of Pinal County.

How Johnson bulldozed his way through the county — literally and figuratively — has been well-reported.

Hoping to re-create the success of Johnson Ranch, Johnson decided in 2003 to develop another 60,000 homes on a tract of land northwest of Tucson called La Osa Ranch.

But paying no attention to environmental regulations, or even to boundaries between public and private land, Johnson's companies and contractors started up the bulldozers and began to blade the desert. According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the companies had bulldozed, without permits, about 270 acres of state trust lands in and near Ironwood Forest National Monument and another 2,000 acres of private land.

Johnson's contractors had carelessly filled in parts of the Santa Cruz River floodplain in violation of clean-water laws and destroyed more than 40,000 protected plants and parts of seven Hohokam archaeological sites, according to state and federal regulators.

Perhaps the most bizarre damage alleged by state regulators was that he brought in a herd of domestic goats to clear brush.

The goats were infected with eye and other diseases. The goats quickly broke through fencing designed for cattle, headed for the hills — literally — and infected the local population of endangered Arizona desert bighorn sheep. Many of the sheep went blind. Others were covered with sores, and at least 21 died, according to state regulators.

Johnson and several of his companies, property managers and contractors were sued by federal and state regulators. For good measure, the Arizona lawsuit threw in complaints about another Johnson development in Apache County. Johnson was accused of diverting water from the Little Colorado River onto his property and polluting the river with fluids from illegally drilled wells.

“His M.O. is to ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” said Terry Goddard, who was Arizona's attorney general at the time. “And it’s always worked for him — until now.”

Johnson struck back: He countersued Goddard and the state, asking for “no less than $35 million” because he had been “singled out for unique regulatory treatment.”

The state lawsuit settled at the end of 2007 for $12.1 million. Johnson and his companies were responsible for $7 million of that, two contractors the rest. The settlement agreement dismissed Johnson's countersuit without any state payment, but in it, Johnson and his companies expressly denied wrongdoing or misconduct.

The next year, the federal lawsuit drew a civil penalty of another $1.25 million, which the Justice Department called “one of the largest in EPA’s history.” Johnson and his companies agreed to pay $1 million of it, and a contractor paid $250,000, but neither side made any admissions of fact or law, according to the federal consent decree.

When Johnson's insurance company balked at paying the fines and settlement, he sued the insurer and prevailed.

Then he sold the land.

Money talks

The state and federal court dockets are rife with civil lawsuits by or against George Johnson and his companies, all of which are closely held and controlled by him. Many of them concern water his companies did or didn't deliver, service that was discontinued, water pressure and potability issues, billing.

He gets sued. He sues back.

The cases often turn back on themselves. For example, in 2002, Johnson and two of his companies entered into a deal to provide water service to one Pinal County builder. He locked up the water certificate, then failed to build the plants. He brought in a partner but got sued because the builder felt he'd misrepresented the deal.

When Johnson found out a government staffer was facilitating efforts to bring in a new utility to serve the builder, he sued the staffer. Ultimately, however, Johnson sold out to that new utility, and all the suits were eventually dismissed.

Litigation is an effective silencer. Johnson and his company have even sued utility customers — as recently as 2013 — who complained publicly about the quality of his water.

Consequently, very few people who have done business with George Johnson will comment for the record.

But money talks.

In 1999, Johnson Utilities purchased for $30,000 some wells belonging to a Queen Creek-area homeowners association called Sun Valley Farms. At the time, a member of that association’s board told The Republic that Johnson had graciously bailed the association out of bankruptcy.

But the board had failed to follow the advice of its attorneys to have the wells appraised. Locals told the newspaper that the wells were worth more than seven times what Johnson Utilities paid. The deal had been signed off on expeditiously by the president of the homeowners association, Larry Quick.

Later, property owners discovered that Johnson had given Quick a loan of $125,000. Quick resigned as president and went to work for the town of Florence. He denied that the loan had anything to do with the well sale.

According to Phoenix New Times, the wells were eventually assessed at $500,000.

That same year, Johnson Utilities was cited by ADEQ for 25 violations, including failure to provide water-quality tests and failure to report contamination.

But Johnson had also curried favor with Pinal County's then-manager Stan Griffis, who backed Johnson's play to land a 30-year contract to provide water. After the ADEQ citations, Griffis defended Johnson, telling The Republic that Johnson “has put a lot into this community; he’s built schools, donated land and built roads.”

He also wrote a check to Griffis’ son and gave a building lot in Johnson Ranch to Griffis’ daughter, according to stories in The Republic at the time.

Griffis would later go to prison for stealing more than $600,000 from the county. Former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley was appointed special prosecutor in that case, and the favors paid to Griffis' family by Johnson were investigated as well.

As part of a 2007 plea agreement, Romley did not prosecute Griffis' family members. He told Republic reporter Dianna Náñez at the time that any criminal charges involving corruption and "special favors" from developers would be the responsibility of the Arizona Attorney General's Office to prosecute.

Johnson went about his business as usual.

Former partner: 'He's not a good guy'

While Griffis was being investigated and prosecuted, Johnson was doing business with Andy Kunasek, then a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Kunasek had worked with Johnson on various real-estate project starting in the 1980s, according to court records. In fact, Kunasek told The Republic that he had introduced Johnson to La Osa Ranch.

Kunasek wanted to buy a piece of it to build a landfill, he said, but the owner did not want to break up the property. Johnson went in and bought the whole thing.

“I can’t dispute I was close to the guy,” Kunasek said.

Johnson talked about bringing Kunasek into his family business, and in 2006, Johnson offered him an option on five percent of Johnson Utilities. A trust was established that owned a small utility business, an engineering firm and a golf course. And over the next few years, Kunasek was earning $200,000 to $300,000 in income from the business.

But in 2009, Kunasek alleges in his lawsuit, Johnson approached him, saying some of his businesses were having problems with "a governmental agency."

"Johnson asked Kunasek to directly contact, speak with, and lobby employees of a state governmental agency (ie. DEQ) on behalf of a Johnson family business and make the problem(s) go away," the lawsuit says.

When asked directly, Kunasek told The Republic that it involved burying sewage that should have been treated.

Documents from ADEQ show Johnson Utilities was served notices of violation in October 2008 and March 2009 accusing it of burying "biosolids and other debris" and sewage sludge without authority or permits, and not notifying the agency of sewage spills.

“I said, 'You need to clean it up,' and he didn’t like that,” Kunasek said.

According to court filings, Johnson demanded Kunasek return the purchase option. Kunasek did not. Court pleadings allege Johnson then severed business between Johnson Utilities and the utility company he owned with Kunasek, effectively starving it out of existence. Kunasek’s income from the company shrank to $121 in 2010, and $28 in 2011. Then Johnson shut it down altogether.

"It was like strong-arm robbery with lawyers and accountants," Kunasek said. "He's not a good guy."

Kunasek sued. Johnson rebutted Kunasek's allegations, claiming in his response that the company had no further income because of the termination of a management contract.

The lawsuit is still unresolved.

Allegations of bribery

It’s not clear who brought the allegations against Johnson of bribery of Gary Pierce. But odds point to the “unindicted co-conspirator,” whose identity likely will come to light.

In 2010, Johnson had requested a $17.5 million rate-base increase to fund a new wastewater plant. And he asked for the ability to charge his customers in an amount that would reimburse him the cost of his personal income taxes.

The Arizona Corporation Commission unanimously rejected the proposal. In its ruling, the commission said, “As we determined (in 2009), it is not appropriate or in the public interest to allow pass through entities such as the company to recover personal income tax expenses through rates. The company’s request is not reasonable and will be denied.”

SEE ALSO:2 votes by indicted regulator under scrutiny

Johnson did not give up. According to the indictment, a year later, in August 2011, when Gary Pierce, the commission chairman, requested proposals for amendments, Johnson came back with the same plan.

Pierce drew up a proposal. And in early September 2011, a rate-base increase valued at more than $18 million passed. Three of the five commissioners, including Pierce, voted in favor.

The amendment also included language allowing Johnson to be considered for pass-through tax reimbursement in the future.

Later that month, the indictment alleges, Pierce and his wife, Sherry, met for dinner with lobbyist Jim Norton and the unindicted co-conspirator, and they hammered out details of the payment.

The mystery co-conspirator’s consulting firm would bill Johnson each month for $6,000, plus expenses, and that person would write a check for $3,500 to Sherry Pierce, the indictment alleges. Sherry Pierce was asked to sign a contract and a confidentiality agreement.

SEE ALSO:Corruption case snares influential AZ lobbyist

Prosecutors allege the money started flowing in November 2011 and continued monthly until August 2012. Sherry Pierce would deposit the checks into a joint account she held with her husband, the indictment says. To make it look like there was actual work being performed, Johnson would take her to lunch and ask her to do simple tasks.

The checks totaled $31,500.

The indictment alleges Pierce also planned to buy a $350,000 land parcel with Norton, using funds provided by Johnson.

In June 2012, while checks were still being sent to Sherry Pierce, Gary Pierce drafted language to allow Johnson and other utility owners to bill customers for their personal income taxes, according to the indictment. Commission staff advised against it, but the measure passed the following February.

It took four years for federal officials to catch wind: The indictment came up May 23, 2017.

On June 7, Johnson, Norton and the Pierces entered not-guilty pleas in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on one count each of conspiracy, bribery and mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to five years in prison for the conspiracy charge, 10 years for bribery and up to 20 years on the fraud charges. In addition, each conviction could bring a possible fine of up to $250,000.

Johnson looked contrite as he stood before the court for the first time, dressed in Western jeans, a purple shirt and an expensive pair of loafers.

He was undoubtedly pondering whether his usual good luck will hold and if business can go on as usual.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi ordered a trial date of Oct. 3.

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