Pinson was an individual wanted for crimes against the Galactic Empire. Pinson was a small-time con-man and one of several such individuals sheltered from the Empire's attentions by Yahenna Laxo of the Gray Syndicate on Lothal. He paid credits to Laxo to be hidden on the top floor of a warehouse near a spaceport. Laxo sold Pinson to a bounty hunter when it became more profitable for Pinson to be in Imperial hands than it was to keep sheltering him and also received a cut of the bounty. Merei Spanjaf was shocked by this, but Laxo felt that it was "just business."