Closer to Closure

Brief updates from the criminal cases against Lori Deveny, Terry Bean, and Megan Moeller — and what it all could mean

Last Friday, the state filed motions to dismiss the 2019 criminal sodomy and sex abuse cases that it had brought against Terry Bean — a wealthy real estate developer and influential civil rights leader — and Kiah Lawson, for an incident that occurred in 2013 with a then-minor. This was the second time that the state brought the charges against the two men.

The original case fell apart in 2014 when the alleged victim participated in settlement negotiations through his then-attorney, Lori Deveny. Deveny then helped secret him until the case was dismissed. According to the minor, Deveny also stole most of his settlement money. Deveny has since resigned her law license rather than defend herself to the state bar.

Judge Charles Zennaché instantly granted the motion to dismiss the sex abuse case against Bean only. A hearing is scheduled in Lawson’s case next month.

The state also opened a contempt case against Bean last Thursday, asking that he be fined $500 for his part, “with and through his former counsel, Derek Ashton,” for the improper settlement agreement, which the state characterized as unlawful, willful, and contrary to the court’s order.

Last fall, I was successful — representing myself — in getting records from the 2014 case unsealed, and Bean’s attorney was unsuccessful in sealing things that had been disclosed elsewhere. The records relate to the settlement and Deveny’s bizarre appearance in the matter. More on those records soon.

Bean and Ashton were also charged in 2019 with computer crimes related to the improper settlement agreement, and on Friday, the state filed a motion to dismiss that computer charge against Bean.

Ashton’s case had already been dismissed in June of last year, and is scheduled for a hearing on April 6 to expunge the entire record.

Interestingly, that hearing is less than a week before the federal criminal trial against Deveny is set to begin.

After repeated postponements totaling nearly three years since her federal indictment — for mail, wire, and bank fraud, identity theft and more — Deveny and her public defender have been forewarned that they are out of time, and there will be no further delays.

Also interesting is that Deveny’s federal trial is scheduled to begin the same day as Megan Moeller’s — another disgraced attorney and alleged serial fraudster and forger.

We know that Deveny has been cooperating with law enforcement even before she was indicted, but she is running out of runway. Her plea deal in the state’s criminal case recently fell apart, and as bad as everything is now, she may have other, bigger problems lurking.

More criminal charges have been long-expected in the case against Moeller, yet still have not dropped. Clearly she is cooperating with law enforcement, but just like Deveny, Moeller has other major problems, too.

Presumably, time will tell who these women were ratting out, but since they both had no real colleagues¹ to give up to law enforcement, they can only inform about the actions of others whose “work” intersected with their own, and whose “work” the feds are generally interested in… for instance public corruption at the courts or in other state agencies or institutions.

And there is evidence of such public corruption in the records created by both former attorneys.

¹ Deveny was a solo practitioner, and Moeller worked in a small office with her husband, state-contracted public defender Erik Moeller.