Woman Impersonated A Prosecutor To Drop Charges Against Herself

Lisa Landon, a 33-year-old woman from Littleton, New Hampshire, is accused of impersonating a Hillsborough County prosecutor so she could drop charges against herself that were currently pending in the county courts. Landon was facing drug possession and stalking charges, but she somehow managed to hack the county’s electronic filing system to pose as a prosecutor and dismiss the charges. In her mugshot, Landon has a wide smile, despite the fact that authorities ultimately caught on to her scheme.

According to the Union Leader, Landon submitted the fake documents in three different court cases last November and December. However, unfortunately for Landon, this is a small county with very few cases and local authorities quickly discovered that there was something wrong with the case.

In November, actual prosecutors that worked for Hillsborough County became suspicious when they heard from a state forensic examiner, who was scheduled to perform a competency evaluation on Landon. The medical examiner contacted the prosecutors wanting to know why the charges had been dismissed.

“The file purported to contain a nolle prosequi (drop the charges) filed by Assistant County Attorney Patrice Casian, but it quickly became evident to the State that the document, as well as other documents in the file, had been filed fraudulently,” Superior Court Judge David Anderson wrote in a recent ruling on Landon’s case.

Now, in addition to the initial charges against Landon, she also faces one charge of false personation and six charges of falsifying physical evidence. She was also recently indicted for burglary and theft.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time that something like this has happened. Earlier this year, a man from Dayton Beach who was facing extortion charges, attempted to impersonate two county prosecutors so he could drop the charges that he was facing. In that case, the suspect, 47-year-old Christian Mosco, reportedly used names and Florida Bar ID numbers of two assistant state attorneys, creating an email in one of their names. 

Authorities said Mosco then logged into the state’s e-filing portal for court documents and altered an “announcement of no information” from someone else’s case before filing on his own extortion case, according to WFTV.

Authorities were tipped off about Mosco’s activities because the filing was made wrong, due to a system that was put into place to prevent fraud.

Florida State Attorney R.J. Larizza said that this type of activity is not common, but it does happen from time to time. In 2013, inmates filed bogus paperwork in Orange County, Florida to get let out of prison, but the loopholes that have allowed these filings have since been closed. Still, there are many people out there who manage to end up staying a few steps ahead of the government.