Lori Deveny Lying in Wait
More BS from behind bars, in both senses of the word
If anyone actually still believed that disgraced personal injury attorney Lori Deveny will turn over a new leaf in prison, I’m here with a bucket of ice water: The only thing she’s using the other side of that leaf for, is to scribble down some more bullshit.
Problematically, the Oregon State Bar is lapping up her lies, and reclassifying them as truth. As is typical when the Bar holds its nose like this, pocketbooks are being affected.
Deveny finally broke her silence about her decades-long fraud, forgery, and theft spree, perpetrated against her vulnerable clients: She responded — from prison — to some of the recent financial claims that her victims filed at the Bar. With previous claims, Deveny simply ignored the Bar’s letters, and the Bar, in return, quickly and quietly paid off her victims.¹
Emails exchanged between Deveny and the Bar were provided to me earlier this week. The earliest was to Bar investigator David Hytowitz, regarding the claim filed by the alleged victim of Terry Bean, whose name I have redacted:
Note Deveny’s tone: Even though she was convicted of these crimes, she still spoke to Hytowitz as a colleague, and thanked him for his “work on behalf of” her “former clients.” In her twisted world, she was a lawyer with clients, not a predator with victims.
Of greater concern, Hytowitz is apparently also her friend, or at least her close acquaintance: She felt familiar enough to mention his daughters and his age, to wish him well, and to throw out an “LOL.” In subsequent emails she even calls him “Dave.” Dave thanked her profusely throughout their conversations, and was unduly deferential to her in his responses.
Given the fact that these victims all had a federal restitution order in hand, it’s problematic that the Bar felt it was appropriate to “investigate” their claims at all. But what is more problematic — unconscionable even — is that the Bar sent in an “investigator” who was Deveny’s friend, or at least a close acquaintance. Talk about having a man on the inside.
Clearly, their relationship clouded his judgment: Hytowitz placed excessive and unjustified faith in the word of a woman sitting in federal prison, convicted of the crimes he was bizarrely straining to relitigate. Hytowitz recommended denying all but one of these new claims. He praised or excused Deveny’s work in paying off her victims’ medical liens, and even loudly questioned if the federal restitution order — which Deveny signed off on — was accurate.
Three of the four victims² told me that Deveny’s responses to Hytowitz were outright lies… and they wonder why he believed her word over theirs. Why was there absolutely no pushback from Hytowitz, and why was her dishonest version of events accepted as true?
James Glynn, whose claim was the one that was approved, disputes her reply and wonders why anyone would believe anything she said, ever again. “All I have that is worth anything is my word,” and it should trump Deveny’s.
Jeahara Schalk also discounts the entirety of Deveny’s responses and Hytowitz’s questions. “He has facts wrong and is not truthful at all. I think both of them are corrupt.”
Alex Smith, who has been fighting the Bar for years now, states, “Everything she indicated is a lie, and I think she’s mixed me up with someone else.” Deveny herself admitted to Hytowitz that she has “some gaps” in her memory, and didn’t “recall any details” or only had “vague recollections” of Smith. In short, Lori Deveny should not be considered a trusted news source.
One thing I do believe is true, is her admission that the Oregon State Bar did not take possession of all of her files, as the court had ordered the agency to do:
The Bar should not have had to “ask for” those cost files. The court order directed the Bar to go and seize them and every other scrap of paper, immediately, and to leave no stone unturned in doing so. The Bar failed in its duty spectacularly.
David Hytowitz did not respond to my inquiries, and one is left to wonder if he generally disregards federal judgments and restitution orders, or just ones that affect his lawyer friends.³
¹ Lori Deveny and the Oregon State Bar have the kind of symbiotic parasitic relationship that a whale shark has with a pilot fish.
² I did not contact alleged Terry Bean victim “M.S.G.” for a response to this new information. I am working on a longer piece as a follow up to that case, particularly this new information regarding the handling of that malpractice case filed against Deveny.
³ All of Deveny’s responses stink lightly of the feigned victimhood she trotted out at sentencing: that she was the victim of an abusive (and conveniently now dead) husband; and that she had no control over her conduct.
