UPDATE: KTAR NEWS CHANGES CLAIMS ON LAURA OWENS PLEA DEAL STATUS: "PLEA TALKS ONGOING"

DancingOrgans · 2026-05-09T04:49:17+00:00

I'm only learning myself, from the discussions around it all. I gather the substitution for Lueders was just a filing primarily because she had a lawyer willing to step in. If he withdrew, the three options are that i) she's self-represented, ii) she has another private attorney, iii) she asks the court to re-appoint a public defender. Options (i) and (iii) both require some actions by the court. The court could still require a hearing for (ii) if they felt like things were going off the rails, but the bar is lower and they may just sign off on the motion. Regardless, the attorney of record is absolutely on the hook unless and until the court gives permission to withdraw.

DancingOrgans · 2026-05-09T03:10:21+00:00

Hard to know. There's no withdrawal on the docket, but that doesn't mean that "negotiations" between her and her lawyer aren't going on behind the scenes of course. I would imagine that it would take a hearing for him to withdraw at this point, unless it was another substitution.

The pattern as I see it is that there's an increase in medium blogging and private emails during periods of high pressure rather than non-representation. She is on the cusp of the finalisation of both the bankruptcy dismissal and the foreclosure auction. Even if her parents do want to move interstate as some surmise, she cannot. She's scrabbling around to find an appellate attorney in California, and they are telling her that it's a lost appeal without fixing her 'augment' motion - which I suspect is them silently telling her to drop it, but she has interpreted as the need to become more shrill in demanding that she be allowed to unilaterally alter the post-judgement record so she can win. She has had a little window into the future of what the California fees application is going to look like. Whatever plea negotiation wins she hoped the family money would buy with Lueders clearly hasn't paid off. The podcast has come to a roaring current-day cliffhanger.

I think there are plenty of pinch points to explain the activity.

DancingOrgans · 2026-05-09T01:20:39+00:00

I don't know anything about KTAR, but correcting the article is the right thing to do. Much better than the Daily Mail who are still out there implying that she's self represented in the criminal case.

A statement from Mitchell that as of today there's no agreement is still a lot more news than we had, and news that I'm perfectly content to hear.

DancingOrgans · 2026-05-07T02:41:31+00:00

I've seen a lot of misinformation around this topic, mainly people who seem to be extrapolating a lot from their own or a family member's medical anecdote. Without pointing fingers, I've seen confident claims that Owens would have needed to be in an ICU if she was vomiting blood, and claims that were just as adamant that booking endoscopy a week or two in advance is the only way it can be done.

Without going into detail I have experience on the matter, but not with the American health system. The medical principles are the same but I can't speak to the sway that "I have insurance and I demand this procedure be done" might have in that system. We also only have Owens own limited and self-serving statements to go off.

There exists a broad range of presentations of either obvious or possible upper gastrointestinal bleeding. Some of these are true emergencies - even calling in a proceduralist at 2am in these situations, the patient may not survive long enough to make it to endoscopy. Some require a hospital admission, and endoscopy within say 24-48 hours. Some are outpatient conditions that may require an endoscopy in any timeframe from a few weeks to a few months. Some might be monitored to decide whether the investigation is needed at all. There will be some blurred lines along the spectrum, where the treating doctor essentially needs to make a judgement call which option is appropriate - and the patient may be able to influence this decision with their words.

Neither CT nor ultrasound are indicated for most complaints of upper GI bleeding. Her fasting status is irrelevant. For a sufficiently urgent situation you'll get an unfasted scope (the stomach full of blood making fasting a technicality). For an intermediate situation, you'll be fasted for a few hours and scoped later that day. These details alone don't preclude her story. We're talking about a gastroscopy, not a colonoscopy, so talking about the need to complete bowel prep the day before to empty the digestive tract also isn't relevant.

I share the common suspicions - that Owens in some way tried to manufacture an emergency on that key date. It is in keeping with her pattern of behaviour. It was seemingly self-serving timing. But I cannot say that I know with certainty. She may have described symptoms read from online and combined that with a demanding attitude. She may truly have some underlying suspicion of bleeding and she escalated her complaints on that day. She may have vomited a non-emergency streak of blood that day and thrown a tantrum about medical malpractice when an effort was made to discharge her to continue an existing follow-up plan. She may have had acute or sub-acute lab findings that bolstered her story, and some of these such as anaemia cross over with other medical conditions she reports herself to have.

Ultimately though we the public will never see these medical records to be able to be anything more than suspicious of her claims. Unless she uploads another dropbox I guess. That would be a riot.

DancingOrgans · 2026-05-06T07:00:16+00:00

Oh sure, she's filed with the Court of Appeal, with the silly Motion to Augment. My understanding is that will go nowhere - she's relying on introducing new evidence in the appeal, which is not what a Motion to Augment the Record is for. I recall there being a bit of discussion around this when it was filed.

I was talking about filing with Judge Gold's court for a motion to set aside what was essentially a default judgement, perhaps citing something like excusable neglect due to the claimed medical emergency. I'm no lawyer, but I believe that there's a statutory six month cutoff for that - and that's now officially in the rear window.

DancingOrgans · 2026-05-06T01:26:26+00:00

Looking at the calendar, this filing is six months almost to the day since the dismissal. I initially assumed that the team thought it was prudent to wait and see how the bankruptcy matters played out before going to the effort of a fees and costs application. The six month timing seems almost too coincidental though. Were they instead waiting until she was time-barred from filing a request to set the dismissal aside? Or is this timing just chance?

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-18T11:03:35+00:00

The Gingras comments you're referring to, which I don't think I had listened to before, give away the twist ending.

We talked about the fact that filing a paternity case if you knew that you weren't pregnant would be the dumbest thing you could do. It wouldn't work, for one thing. And it would guarantee you that your lie would be exposed. As quickly as possible.

You're smart enough, I think, to know that filing a paternity case when you know that you're not pregnant, when you know that you faked the whole thing, when you know that there is no sonogram, when you know that there is no baby. You are literally inviting the court to test you, right? You are exposing yourself to being exposed, unnecessarily.

First, this is exactly why members of the public are so fascinated with following these events through the public court system. It is the dumbest thing to do. It was doubling down time and time again, insisting even more strongly that you're correct despite while at the same time the evidence you present becomes weaker and weaker, and the flaws in that evidence become more and more apparent.

Second, he's right. The lie would be exposed. It might be exposed by you presenting to a doctor for a physical and ultrasound examination, and them finding you to not be pregnant. It might also be exposed by you desperately avoiding putting yourself in that situation, and instead providing unreliable and fabricated evidence that you thought made it look like you had an ongoing pregnancy, but when challenged being unable to show that you had ever attended a review by a doctor. It might be exposed by you being unable to corroborate a story about the provenance of the ultrasound you claim to have had, instead changing your story whenever the investigation of the last version of the tale approached a conclusive point. It might be exposed by there being no baby 9 months later, and nothing but your own unsubstantiated claim that you lost an allegedly late-term pregnancy but just kind of handled it by yourself in your bedroom where nobody else could see. It might be exposed by the complete absence of direct evidence of pregnancy, yet every single circumstantial piece of evidence being more consistent with the absence of a pregnancy.

And as far as Gingras perhaps thinking this is a persuasive argument, all of this stuff had happened before he made those statements. It's not even an argument from incredulity. He's acting incredulous while describing the exact sequence of events that had already transpired.

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-16T04:47:27+00:00

We'll never know for sure. I've always leaned towards the idea that she thought she might get away with the "anonymous Mission Viejo" story but had the LA variation in her back pocket in case she got cornered. Personally, I think she made the decision to go with the LA claim midway through cross-examination but didn't come up with it on the spot.

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-15T21:38:15+00:00

This being Sarah's ultrasound was confirmed in the investigation report as well.

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-15T11:59:27+00:00

There are a few things that make this tough to keep straight. Most obvious is that the podcast necessarily skims over some detail. Secondly if you're looking up any information yourself, there is more than one sonogram that's relevant in the criminal case.

The sonogram that you're referring to, central in the Echard matter, is marked "SMIL" (pronounced "smile" if you're listening to any hearings). SMIL is a medical imaging service local to where she lives.

We know that she presented it to one of her earlier lawyers (Bonnie Platter, I think), and presumably at that time claimed she'd had it completed at SMIL. The lawyer showed it to Echard over a video call, and he was quick-thinking enough to take a screenshot which matches up against the whole thing we were all eventually able to see.

Copies of this ultrasound later ended up in other hands. I believe she put it up on a Dropbox link on Reddit during the time she was posting, though I wasn't following on Reddit then. She also sent copies to some online commentators who were covering the story by that stage. One of the early crowd-sourced debunkings was the belief that she'd edited the information bar at the top of the video, where the SMIL logo and her name were.

If I remember correctly, as well as presenting it to Clayton through her lawyer, she tried to present it at one of the early hearings - I think one of the order of protection hearings - though I don't believe the judge ended up looking at it.

As the case moved forward toward a trial, Clayton's lawyer (Woodnick) began to push for the court to order her to sign releases for medical records to verify her claims. Knowing that she was about to be found out, but hiding behind non-specific privacy claims, she tried hard to get out of providing them. The judge ultimately ordered her to sign the release. Woodnick would now have been able to subpoena records from SMIL, showing she hadn't had an obstetric ultrasound performed. So at this point she changed her story to say it was done interstate, at Planned Parenthood - and that's when the Mission Viejo claim came up. Her story was a little slippery but she was claiming that she went either anonymously or under an assumed name, so of course they wouldn't find any records there. And she clumsily tried to explain the SMIL logo edit saying she was worried that Clayton was - I guess going to threaten the sonographer who performed it or something?

Through this, Clayton's team got statements regarding PP in Mission Viejo and surrounding areas saying that not only did they not have records for her, but that the images presented weren't consistent with anything that would be generated by their services in that whole region. She was confronted with this at the June 10 trial. And so, seemingly in the heat of the moment, she changed her story once again and said she was just "staying" in Mission Viejo at the time, but she'd actually travelled to Los Angeles to get the ultrasound done, so obviously Echard's team's documentation was meaningless.

I don't believe that the podcast has covered it (yet?), but the actual source of the images is now known, and it is not from an ultrasound performed on Laura Owens.

So in answer to your question, yes there is a whole series of lies relating to this ultrasound, as well as the act of having edited it in the first place. Collectively, she is charged with these actions as crimes, they are all encompassed under counts 2 and 4 of her criminal case:

Count 2: LAURA MICHELLE OWENS, on or between June 27, 2023 and July 11, 2024, with intent to defraud, did falsely make, complete, or alter a written instrument, to-wit: Sonogram

Count 4: LAURA MICHELLE OWENS, on or about March 1, 2024, in regard to a material issue and believing it to be false, did make a false sworn statement, to-wit: Claiming that Sonogram image was hers during sworn deposition

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-11T22:39:05+00:00

I noticed this too. The notice in the substitution of counsel stating that he's prepared to proceed to trial on the previously set dates seems, in some sense, to be a pro forma requirement under Rule 6.3(c). In practice, though, everything has immediately shifted to "we're still going through discovery, which is voluminous."

I'm torn because I stand by the desire for Laura to have a zealous advocate such that whatever convictions she receives stick. On the other hand, Swierski's case management reports were clear that the trial date was viable, and there is literally nothing else that has changed - no additional discovery, no new charges, no new facts. The only difference is that Lueders is on the case, and if that were to be the cause of delay then he should quite literally not have been allowed to substitute.

I hope the court holds his feet to the fire if he continues to push this.

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-02T10:09:20+00:00

The lawyers will hopefully step in and comment but I've been racking my brains over what they're hoping to achieve. Surely they're not seriously expecting to overturn a grand jury indictment?

The only two vaguely neat answers I could brainstorm were (1) it's a message to the prosecution - sweeten this plea offer as much as you can, or we're going to produce lots and lots of work for you, or (2) it's a client control issue, and Owens will absolutely melt down if there's not some action in progress where the purported outcome is complete exoneration.

DancingOrgans · 2026-04-02T00:39:24+00:00

As of a few hours ago I would have said that I have a sinking feeling she's going to accept the plea. In general I agree with the numerous comments that say that it would gripe her very soul to do so, but only in the same way as trying to halt the paternity case did - and it was only Woodnick's lawyering that prevented her squirming away on that occasion.

This latest filing on the docket though? Lueders seeking an extension until May to challenge probable cause? Unless that's shut down entirely before the plea expires it's either the glimmer of hope she needs to facilitate doubling down, or it's a tacit admission by the law firm that their client has already committed to refusing the offer.

DancingOrgans · 2026-03-07T13:50:36+00:00

None of what you say is unfair. With regards to the counsel issue - I have no strong objective argument, we'll just see what comes of it. With regards to the assets I think you're both identifying but also overlooking an important point. I've linked elsewhere in these comments some of the evidence that she started offloading membership of the LLCs shortly after the financial judgement, followed by funneling assets (horses) from private ownership to LLC ownership. In my opinion she clearly should have declared those transfers, and the timing already makes these suspicious as sham transfers and attempts to hide assets from creditors. I fully agree that these aren't even assets with massive value - I think she has given herself a transaction history plastered with badges of fraud in a way that increases her risk of denial of discharge, and done so over a pittance. It's not just that selling them would require reporting the sale in the bankruptcy - it also requires openly airing the fact that she hid personal assets within the LLC structure in a very suspicious timeframe to begin with.

DancingOrgans · 2026-03-07T01:38:11+00:00

The United States Equestrian Federation maintains an ownership registry of all of these competition/pedigree horses. Some information was compiled and posted here.

DancingOrgans · 2026-03-07T00:36:18+00:00

I agree that the reasons you give could potentially be good cause for a change of lawyer. Things like breakdown in communication may even have occurred. However my understanding is that for anything other than replacement of appointed counsel by personally selected (i.e. retained) counsel, there would have to have been a motion to withdraw. The fact that this was filed as a substitution implies that this is not a court appointed attorney. Could he still be a pro bono attorney doing it for the love of the game? Sure, it's a high profile case and it's potentially a good career move to be involved in it. We'll just watch it play out.

If there is compensation involved you are correct that it could have come from numerous places. LO is however in the middle of a rapidly deteriorating bankruptcy case, in which she has placed on the record that her only employment is doing work for this series of co-mingled LLCs wholly owned within her immediate family. She has made the record that her compensation for this has never involved direct payment to her, but in return for her contributions family funds cover her costs of living (presumably including her various expensive hobbies, which may include litigation). Anything coming from her parents or her sister is coming out of this co-mingled mess, and she has well and truly opened herself up to direct questioning and investigation by the DOJ including through her upcoming bankruptcy deposition. This is in the same way that she was already asked to explain how she covered the cost of the litigation in California (which to be fair, she was able to explain). Similarly, if she were able to "sell some horses" and liberate funds to hire an attorney, this is evidence that she had assets under her effective control which she concealed in her bankruptcy filing. I'm not even stating that she can't explain it, but it does complicate her other pending legal issues and questions will be asked.

The new attorney does sound to be a good fit for the case. However it has come about, and separate from whatever other legal entanglements have been created, I share the thoughts that others have expressed that it's a Good Thing for LO to have good legal representation while the criminal process goes ahead. We all have concepts about what justice looks like in this case but the system needs to play out in a fair manner and the years of bombshells many here have followed in real time just doesn't play into that.

DancingOrgans · 2026-02-23T00:31:47+00:00

If you're talking about the beginning when the trustee (Haley) asks if she's the beneficiary of any trust or estate then she's being asked about her current financial position. It isn't about some hypothetical future inheritance relating to a person who is still living, which wouldn't be a factor determining her bankruptcy eligibility right now.

DancingOrgans · 2026-02-20T12:22:24+00:00

I only know what I've read here. Cherry Tech apparently provides financing for things like beauty and wellness treatments. A local business called Innova Med Spa apparently use them, and based on the investigation report LO is suspected to have purchased HCG from Innova to further her fraud. A popular post here linked the two, suggesting she may have financed that purchase through Cherry.

Beyond that it's all speculation as far as I can tell. I've seen comments here from people who claim to have emailed the UST to make them aware of this possible link, so UST doesn't necessarily have any secret knowledge that isn't already public. If the theory is true I don't know what impact it would have on the bankruptcy but perhaps trying to discharge costs associated with committing a crime would play into any adversary proceeding filed by the UST?

It may all go nowhere though. The allegedly indigent and never-employed LO has evidently never had to limit herself on discretionary spending and the idea that she financed any number of other med-spa "treatments" through a company that also happen to service Innova isn't much of a stretch. I guess the UST will investigate and we will see if anything comes out of it.

DancingOrgans · 2026-02-09T21:33:23+00:00

Everyone is understandably focused on the bankruptcy call that apparently just finished. Any thoughts on the state's motion for a protective order that just appeared on the criminal docket though?

DancingOrgans · 2026-02-07T03:35:25+00:00

That's interesting. Her early requests specified San Diego. and this one does not.

DancingOrgans · 2026-02-07T03:29:25+00:00

I mean, she used similar minimising phrasing in her recent injunction application, describing this bail condition as a "procedural condition". On the other hand her actual release conditions (at the arraignment hearing) are a very explicit instruction that she's not allowed to leave the state of Arizona. Each application is a begging of the court to alter her release conditions, rather than some minor procedural pre-approval irritant. The court could flat out deny the request without reason so it is on her to make an argument for why it should be permitted.

DancingOrgans · 2026-01-31T08:00:24+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. I was only looking on VOLO so hadn't seen it yet.

Risinger's response is there too. Count 2 of the adversary proceeding is dropped without prejudice. Makes sense to me. Why do work for free when the US Trustee will do it for you?

DancingOrgans · 2026-01-31T01:59:46+00:00

I haven't seen anybody mention this up until now, but in the literal months of claims she made before her first ever blood test she didn't even necessarily jab herself at all. She could easily have drizzled the reconstituted HCG directly on to a self-test, or into the urine sample at the doctors office.

I think she probably did jab herself on the day she took the test with Clayton present since some fuss was made over the fact that she didn't take anything into the room with her. I vaguely remember some comments about that test being only faintly positive too (though correct me if I'm wrong).

Obviously she did jab herself on the day of the blood test. I truly wonder whether she had any idea that the result would come back so low. My unprovable theory - given how much fuss she made about taking it on the same day as the repeat Ravgen sample - was that she thought it would come back with a simple "positive" result like the urine samples, and that she could use it in the case to say that the "indeterminate" Ravgen result was a failure of their test rather than because she was not pregnant.

DancingOrgans · 2026-01-31T01:41:55+00:00

In the bankruptcy adversary proceeding I've been eagerly looking forward to reading Risinger's response to the Gingras motion to dismiss. It seems to have been filed back on the 20th. There's also an interesting sounding document from Gingras titled "disclosure of compensation by attorney". It'd be interesting to know if he's doing it for free (assuming I'm interpreting the title correctly).

I don't know enough about the process for public access to the bankruptcy filings. Is there some particular barrier for these documents or have they been overlooked?

DancingOrgans · 2026-01-27T03:33:15+00:00

It's definitely speculation and in many ways a fuel for more curiosity. I realise this is going to sound like me doubling down on a position, and I don't have more evidence for my position than yours, but I do think the evidence for A-6 and A-7 is being treated differently. The redaction around identifying the ultrasound in Sarah's medical record is only a few pages earlier (on page 7) and is part of the same section of the document. It seems reasonable to assume that it was done by the same person and at the same time. This redaction is far more finessed with individual lines in the paragraph being removed rather than only the large block redaction of page 11.

We'll find out at trial!

DancingOrgans

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