The Record They Built to Bury a Plea Agreement

What the Plea Hearing Transcript Actually Shows

The October 26, 2022 plea hearing in Barry County Circuit Court lasted four minutes. The transcript is eight pages. What happened in those four minutes is documented on the certified record.

The presiding judge told the courtroom that no plea agreements existed in the case. The assistant prosecuting attorney confirmed it. Defense counsel said nothing to correct either statement. The defendant was then placed under oath and asked whether anyone had forced, threatened, or promised him something the court was not aware of to get him to plea. The defendant answered no. The prosecutor answered no. Defense counsel answered none.

Three named sources with direct knowledge of the case, including the defendant’s supervising attorney at the time, have confirmed separately that written documentation of a plea agreement existed and that defense counsel was in possession of it. That documentation has never been produced. The agreement’s terms were no incarceration and probation not to exceed three years, in exchange for a no contest plea and full cooperation.

The defendant cooperated. He answered questions. He turned in items. He complied with every directive he was given between the plea date and the sentencing date. What he did not know was that the agreement his attorney had confirmed to him was no longer on the record.

What the Sentencing Transcript Actually Shows

The January 12, 2023 sentencing hearing ran for nearly an hour. What the transcript shows in that hour is more than most people expect.

APA Elsworth placed the following on the certified record: the complaining company had met with him before sentencing. Their primary concern was return of money, not incarceration. They did not want jail time. They wanted the defendant to never work in the field again. Elsworth acknowledged this put him in an awkward position because the company was not a vulnerable victim. He stated he typically stands up and advocates for what victims want.

He then advocated for incarceration.

Following appeal, the sentence was reduced to 60 to 240 months. The defendant remains incarcerated with approximately 18 months remaining. The correctly scored guideline range remains 12 to 20 months.

The Restitution Figure That Was Never Verified

The $565,922 restitution figure presented at sentencing was derived from the complaining company’s own records. A forensic accountant was not retained to independently verify those figures until after sentencing. The defendant disputed approximately 20 to 25 percent of the amount at sentencing. APA Elsworth acknowledged the dispute on the record and represented that the parties would resolve it at a restitution hearing.

That hearing was scheduled for March 30, 2023. It never occurred. The restitution amount remains unresolved.

Family members with ownership connections to the complaining company provided documentation and statements establishing that the company’s financial practices and internal controls were faulty during the period at issue. That documentation reflects conditions the insurance industry characterizes as underwriting fraud: a failure to correct known financial control deficiencies prior to the alleged conduct period. No independent forensic accounting was conducted before sentencing to verify the figures derived from those controls.

What Defense Counsel Told His Client About the Turn-Ins

At the October 26, 2022 plea hearing, the presiding judge directed the defendant to gather every item he possibly could and turn it in before sentencing, stating that the better job he did, the more it would affect sentencing. The defendant took that directive seriously.

Text communications between the defendant and defense counsel, produced in related proceedings, document the defendant asking multiple times during the period between the plea and sentencing about the turn-in process. Defense counsel’s repeated response was to wait until sentencing.

Defense counsel did not contact the prosecuting attorney or the judge during that period to coordinate the turn-in process, document the defendant’s compliance efforts, or establish a mechanism for presenting that compliance to the court. At the sentencing hearing, the judge stated on the record that he did not know what the attorney had recommended or not. That statement is on page 29 of the certified sentencing transcript.

At sentencing, defense counsel acknowledged on the record that the defendant had made an attempt to get through most of the belongings and expressed his willingness to forfeit items under court order. He offered no explanation for why the process had not been completed. He did not disclose that he had told his client to wait. He did not disclose that he had taken no steps to coordinate the process in the months between plea and sentencing.

The AGC Responses That Denied the Agreement Existed

In May 2023, in response to Attorney Grievance Commission inquiries, the Barry County Prosecuting Attorney and APA Elsworth submitted formal responses authored by counsel at Cummings, McClorey, Davis and Acho. Those responses outright denied that a plea agreement had existed in the underlying matter. They also contained false statements regarding the restitution figure.

Those responses were submitted within four months of sentencing. At the time of submission, the plea agreement email was in defense counsel’s possession. The defendant’s supervising attorney at the time of representation had already confirmed the agreement’s existence in a recorded conversation in March 2023.

The Late Brief and the Reply Window That Disappeared

In connection with the defendant’s application for leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court, the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office was required to file its Answer by August 20, 2025, after already receiving an extension. The office filed the brief on September 9, 2025, twenty days late, by USPS mail to the defendant’s correctional facility address.

The State Court Administrative Office, Region V, confirmed the September 9, 2025 filing date in a letter dated December 22, 2025, addressed to the journalist covering this case. That letter is on Michigan Supreme Court letterhead. Under Michigan Court Rules, the defendant’s reply window ran from the date the prosecution’s answer was filed. The twenty-day late filing consumed that window entirely. The defendant never received the brief. He was excluded from meaningful participation in the final stage of his direct appellate review by the office of the prosecuting attorney who, in the same period, was withholding the plea agreement email.

The SCAO closed the matter. The record was never corrected.

The Corporate Attorney Who Knew Exactly What He Was Doing

Nicholas Missad is an attorney at Varnum LLP, one of Michigan’s largest law firms. He was retained by the complaining company in this matter. In late summer 2023, he sent a cease and desist to the journalist covering this case regarding her investigative reporting on the company’s financial practices. The journalist responded to that cease and desist.

Missad then forwarded her response directly to APA Christopher Elsworth, with the comment: “I think the dam is about to break.”

That email is in Clutch Justice’s possession, produced in discovery in Barry County court proceedings.

Missad knew who he was writing to. Elsworth was the APA who had handled the criminal prosecution of the journalist’s husband. Missad knew who he was writing about. The journalist covering the company’s financial misconduct and the defendant’s spouse were the same person, and her response to the cease and desist made that plain. He forwarded it anyway. His clients paid him to make that connection.

Using retained legal counsel to route correspondence about a criminal defendant’s spouse to the prosecuting APA in that defendant’s case is not standard civil practice. It is not privileged. It is not protected. It is documented. And it raises a question that Nicholas Missad, Varnum LLP, and the company that retained them should be prepared to answer: what exactly did they expect APA Elsworth to do with that information, and what did he do with it in the weeks before retaliatory charges were filed in Barry County against the journalist whose response they had just forwarded to him.

That question does not have a good answer. The timeline answers it instead.

Weeks later, retaliatory charges were filed in Barry County against the journalist. APA Elsworth was the charging decision maker in the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office at the time those charges were filed. The journalist was subsequently released from probation early.

The complaining company changed its sentencing position at the November 2023 resentencing, after the cease and desist had been sent and after the Missad communication to Elsworth.

What Was Admitted on the Court Record

In November 2023, both the Barry County Prosecuting Attorney and APA Elsworth admitted on the court record in proceedings involving the journalist that pictures of her had been printed and posted inside the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office. That admission is corroborated by witness communications.

Throughout those proceedings, the Prosecuting Attorney required members of her staff to attend the journalist’s personal court hearings. The journalist is the editor and founder of Clutch Justice, which has published sustained investigative coverage of Barry County judicial and prosecutorial conduct since 2022.

The Selective Prosecution Contrast

At the January 2023 sentencing hearing, APA Elsworth stated he typically stands up and advocates for what victims want. The record documents what he did when the victim wanted no incarceration.

The Barry County Prosecutor’s Office declined to investigate or prosecute Richelle Spencer, a Barry County Sheriff’s Deputy and candidate for sheriff, for felony stalking of a Hastings pediatrician conducted during her working hours and while she was actively campaigning. The declination was attributed to victim privacy wishes. The matter was documented in the Sixberry Notes, released via FOIA, and reported by Clutch Justice. Spencer was subsequently arrested by Michigan State Police and the case was taken up by Kent County.

Victim wishes were honored when the beneficiary was a law enforcement candidate. They were disregarded when honoring them would have required following through on a negotiated plea agreement with a civilian defendant.

The Pattern the Court of Appeals Has Already Addressed

The sentence imposed on the defendant did not occur in isolation. Published Michigan Court of Appeals decisions document a pattern of upward departures and offense variable manipulation in Barry County cases involving Judge Schipper, with APA Elsworth as the prosecuting attorney driving those departures.

In People v. Velasquez, the guideline range was 0 to 6 months. Schipper imposed 36 to 60 months. The sentence was vacated and remanded. On remand, Schipper imposed conditions above time served. The sentence was vacated again. Resentencing was ordered before a different judge, specifically barring Schipper from presiding.

In People v. Huggins, an extreme upward departure adopting the prosecution’s rationale was vacated and remanded. In People v. Arizola, a sentence of 240 to 480 months plus consecutive felony-firearm on a guideline range of 19 to 76 months was vacated and remanded. People v. Handley was remanded following over-resentencing after a prior correction.

In the matter at the center of this investigation, the correctly scored guideline range was 12 to 20 months. The sentence imposed was 120 to 240 months. After appeal, it was reduced to 60 to 240 months. The defendant remains incarcerated. His correctly scored guideline range has not changed.

What Is Happening Now

Formal demand letters and notices of intent to pursue legal action were served on June 23, 2026, on named individuals and entities connected to the conduct documented in this article. The demands include production of the plea agreement email, written explanation of the conduct documented in the certified transcripts, and immediate recusal of the attorneys named in this investigation from matters connected to Barry County.

A grievance was filed with the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission on June 23, 2026, arising from the conduct documented in this article. Additional AGC grievances connected to this matter were filed previously.

Post-conviction motions are in preparation. They have not been filed.

This Is What a Scheme Looks Like. The Titles Do Not Change That.

The journalist covering this case investigates fraud and litigation schemes professionally. That work involves identifying patterns in documented conduct, tracing coordinated sequences across multiple actors, mapping suppressed documentation, and distinguishing individual error from institutional design. It is the same methodology applied to white collar fraud, insurance schemes, and civil litigation abuse.

What the record in this case shows is not distinguishable from those patterns by any professional standard. A plea agreement was negotiated, documented, and then denied on the record by the attorneys who made it, while one of them held the email proving it existed. An unverified financial figure was presented at sentencing and a hearing to settle the dispute was scheduled and abandoned. A disciplinary body received formal responses denying the agreement’s existence within four months of sentencing. A corporate attorney retained by the complaining party wrote to the prosecuting APA in anticipation of outcomes against the journalist reporting on the case. Retaliatory charges followed. The Supreme Court brief was filed twenty days late, eliminating the defendant’s reply window, and he never received a copy.

In any other context, that sequence has a name. The bar cards and the prosecutorial titles do not change the structure of what occurred. They change the immunity calculation.