Dispensary Clerks Faced the Gun in Jackson’s Portland Spree

Cory Jackson pleaded guilty on May 29, 2025, to six counts of first-degree robbery with a firearm. The 44-year-old admitted holding up five Portland cannabis dispensaries and a bar, and he faces at least 20 years in prison on the Multnomah County cases.

His partner on those jobs, Melissa Ann Maxwell, 45, already pleaded guilty in April 2025 and is serving a 20-year sentence. The people who met the gun were the clerks behind the counter.

Five Dispensaries and a Bar

Portland Police Bureau detectives first tied Jackson, then 43, to five gunpoint jobs in a five-month stretch of 2023. The bureau listed each hit by date and block, all of them cannabis shops, and later prosecutors added a sixth count for a bar in the same county.

Surveillance from the June 19 job on Southeast Cesar Chavez Boulevard shows the pair inside Oregon Bud Company, at the southwest corner of Chavez and Holgate in the Reed neighborhood. Jackson had a mask on and a thin disguise, and the camera caught him with a gun out.

THE FIVE PORTLAND DISPENSARY HOLDUPS

The guilty plea also covered a bar robbery in Multnomah County that was not on that first wanted list. Jackson admitted four robbery counts in case 23CR37456, one in 23CR60391, and one in 23CR62755, plus aggravated identity theft in 24CR34239.

Portland Police Emptied a Store to Arrest Him

In February 2024 the bureau asked the public to help find him. Detectives described a white man, 5’10” and 170 pounds, who used wigs to change his look and had knuckle tattoos that read HOME SICK. They also named him as a suspect in felony crimes in Washington, Arizona, and Nevada.

The break came from Vancouver police, who called Portland officers on the evening of May 21, 2024, and said a wanted man was driving south on I-5. Portland officers were already in the Jantzen Beach area on a stolen-vehicle operation. They found him parking in the 2000 block of North Tomahawk Island Drive and walking into a store, cleared the building, talked him out, and took him into custody without a fight. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office dated that arrest May 22, 2024, the morning he was lodged at the county detention center on multiple warrants.

Major Crimes handled the file. The DA’s office later thanked Detectives Rachel Baer and Michael Greenlee, the Oregon State Police crime lab in Clackamas for last-minute DNA work, and Vancouver police for the stop on the highway.

FROM THE FIRST SHOP TO THE GUILTY PLEA

1. April 25, 2023: Uses a gun to rob a dispensary in the 2500 block of Northwest Nicolai Street.
2. September 6, 2023: Uses a gun to rob a dispensary in the 3200 block of Southeast Johnson Creek Boulevard, the last shop on the bureau’s list.
3. February 2024: Portland police name Cory J. Jackson and ask the public for help finding him.
4. May 21, 2024: Vancouver police flag him on I-5; Portland officers empty a Jantzen Beach store and take him into custody.
5. April 2025: Melissa Ann Maxwell pleads guilty to robbery counts and begins a 20-year prison sentence.
6. May 29, 2025: Jackson pleads guilty to six first-degree robberies with a firearm and to aggravated identity theft.
7. July 9, 2025: Multnomah County sets this date for sentencing; the DA’s office has not posted a later release on the term imposed.

Police also released video from the Portland-area jobs, the same clips prosecutors later used to walk a jury, or a plea, through the gun on the counter.

What the Workers Faced at the Counter

Deputy District Attorney Chris Shull, who led the Multnomah County case, put the harm on the people clocked in to sell flower, not on a ledger of stolen cash. He said Jackson and Maxwell put a gun on “numerous hard working Portlanders,” and he said no one should meet that at work.

No employee should go to work and face the barrel of a gun in a robbery. Cory Jackson and Melissa Maxwell, however, traumatized numerous hard working Portlanders by doing just that, over and over again. I’m glad they were both peaceably arrested and will be removed from this community, giving their many victims a sense of safety.

Chris Shull, Multnomah County deputy district attorney

The DA’s office also thanked victim advocates Karla Juarez and Nang Dunn for work with those employees. None of the shop clerks were named in the May 29 release, which is how these files often read: the man with the wig and the tattoos gets the headline, and the person who opened the till gets a generic noun.

That pattern is older than this pair. Christina Coursey, the city’s cannabis and liquor programs manager, told Portland City Council in October 2024 that police data showed 33 robberies at cannabis businesses in the first half of 2023, more than the yearly totals from 2016 through 2022. Jackson’s five listed shop jobs sit inside that half-year spike. The clerks on those shifts were the ones who had to decide whether to hand over the drawer.

Melissa Maxwell Is Already Serving 20 Years

Maxwell, 45, was not a footnote. Shull described her as Jackson’s accomplice on the robberies, and she pleaded guilty to several robbery counts in April 2025, a month before he took the six firearm counts. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Jackson still faces at least 20 years on the Multnomah cases alone, a floor that matches the term already running on Maxwell. Prosecutors have not said, in the May 29 release, how the pair split the work inside each shop, only that they worked together and that employees were the people in front of the gun.

For the workers, the pairing matters because a second person in the doorway changes the math on a night shift. One clerk on a counter, two people with a firearm, and a till that still holds cash is a bad ratio, and it repeated across five shops and a bar.

Why the Shops Still Hold So Much Cash

Federal law still treats cannabis as illegal, so many banks will not take the deposits. Shops then keep bills on site, pay vendors in cash, and sometimes send staff home with pay in a pocket. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who has pushed cannabis banking bills since 2015, put that risk in writing on April 20, 2024, while Jackson was still in local custody and before the guilty pleas.

WHY CASH STILL DRAWS A GUN

• The retailers: Merkley wrote that the cash trade is dangerous for shops, with more than 100 retail outlets robbed in the prior year in Oregon alone.
• The people on shift: He said it is dangerous for customers who arrive with cash and for employees who may leave with a month’s pay in a pocket.
• The tax run: He said owners still haul cash to the State Capitol to pay quarterly taxes.
• The side door: He called the same pile of bills an open invitation to money laundering and organized crime.

The SAFER Banking Act he introduced in 2023 was meant to let federally regulated banks serve state-legal cannabis firms. It has not taken cash off Portland counters. Until it does, a clerk locking up a dispensary is still standing next to the thing a robber came for in 2023.

Fewer Shop Robberies, Many More Break-Ins

Jackson has been in custody since that Jantzen Beach stop. The city’s next full year of shop-crime numbers, fiscal 2025 from July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025, shows armed holdups at retail cannabis stores did fall, while break-ins rose.

PORTLAND CANNABIS CRIME, FISCAL 2025

• Retail robberies: 28 reported, a 40% drop from the prior fiscal year, or 19 fewer incidents than the 47 implied by that decline.
• Retail burglaries: 45 reported, part of a 78% rise in burglaries across all cannabis businesses.
• Warehouse burglaries: up 225% in the same fiscal year.
• Shops hit: 87 of 399 cannabis businesses, 22%, reported a burglary, a robbery, or vandalism.

Those cannabis business crime statistics also show retail shops logged 90 incidents in fiscal 2025: 45 burglaries, 28 robberies, and 17 vandalism reports. October 2024 was the worst month for retail robberies in that year, with 9. That is a different series from Coursey’s 33 robberies in the first half of 2023, and it is a city count, not a statewide one like Merkley’s 100 outlets.

A drop in street holdups after a serial gunman is locked up is the outcome prosecutors wanted. It is not the same as taking the cash magnet off the counter. Warehouse crews smashing in after midnight are a different threat, but the people who still open the door at 10 a.m. are the same class of worker Shull was talking about.

Prosecutors Still Have Cases in Two Counties

The Multnomah plea does not end the file. The DA’s office said Jackson also faces charges in Washington County and Clackamas County, plus at least one federal charge. Sentencing on the Multnomah counts was set for July 9, 2025. No later notice from that office listing the term actually imposed has been posted beside the May 29 release.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The Multnomah plea: Jackson pleaded guilty to six first-degree robberies with a firearm and to aggravated identity theft.
• The partner: Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after an April 2025 guilty plea.
• The arrest: He was taken into custody at Jantzen Beach after Vancouver police flagged him on I-5.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The Multnomah term: The DA said he faces at least 20 years; the July 9, 2025 sentencing date has no follow-up release on this file.
• Other courts: Washington County, Clackamas County, and federal charges were described as still ahead as of May 29, 2025.
• Out-of-state felonies: Police named him as a suspect in Washington, Arizona, and Nevada; those cases were not part of the Multnomah plea.

Maxwell is already in prison on a 20-year term. Jackson is in custody on a plea that carries at least 20 years in Multnomah County, with more courts still to hear from. The next night shift at a Portland dispensary still has to count a till that federal law will not let a bank hold.