00:00:00
Speaker 1: This is the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast with iHeartRadio.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Almost Famous Podcast. It's Ashley, and today we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive on the Clayton Eckert fraternity fraud case involving Laura Owens. So she was just, she pled guilty in a criminal case, which is one of the reasons that this case has been brought up again. And simultaneously, Clayton has quite a hit podcast in telling the story. So we have a guest today. He has practiced criminal law for nearly 15 years, and he's served as a legal expert on CNN and KTLA in LA. Please welcome to the podcast, Ryan Kearns, to help us understand this case a little bit better. Hey, Ryan.
00:00:50
Speaker 3: Hi, Ashley. Thanks for having me on. This is certainly an adventure of a case. For anybody that's been a lawyer and that's practiced in criminal or practiced in family law, I mean, this touches every part of our legal system. And it is PTSD moments, I think, for a lot of lawyers that are listening to this podcast, seeing how far things can unravel and get out of hand. It's been an amazing, amazing story.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of parts. There's a lot of details. Just to break down for simplicity's sake, can you tell our audience how there's been two trials now with Clayton and this woman? One has been civil, and that was closed in 2024. And one, she just currently pled guilty during, and that was a criminal case.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: So there's actually been more than that. So there's the initial civil paternity case, which was how this whole thing started. where Laura filed for paternity. That case ended in a verdict for Clayton and nearly $ 150, 000 in attorney's fees for him, which is pretty remarkable. There's also restraining order cases. So there were dueling restraining orders involving both Laura and Clayton, initially granted for both of them. And then after the paternity, the civil case in the paternity, it was referred actually by the judge in that civil case to Maricopa County prosecutors for criminal evaluation. That led to the criminal charges and the plea agreement that just came out last week. So there's, it's, when I say it's kind of touched everything, it's touched family law, it's touched restraining orders, it's touched criminal, really everything you can get to in a dispute like this. So it's been pretty amazing.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: The way that I'm trying to simplify it in my head is that the 2024, the one that, like, the big one is that he.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: Sued her in civil court so that he could clear his name of any things that she was accusing him of, right?
00:02:53
Speaker 3: Right. You wanted to continue the, you actually filed motions to continue the paternity case even after there was, after she had said there was a non-viable, there was no longer a baby, it was not viable. And so there shouldn't be a paternity case even after she's the one who filed it. And he had filed motions to continue that because he wanted proof. He wanted there to be an actual court decision that said you were never pregnant. And if you were, it was not mine because the saga has, you know, he's never gotten a straight answer or a court decision. That's that's confirmed that despite, you know, all this time trying to get, you know, some real answers. So he's, he pushed really hard for, for all of that. Even after the case was technically moved because there wasn't a baby anymore.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: She accused him of getting her pregnant, even though they never had penetrative, as I look around for making my son, son in the room, sex. Um, they was, she said that you were a little bit woozy that day. You took a gummy. You don't know what actually happened. And then said that he got her pregnant, um, with twins and, on one night. And then because of that, because she said that she was pregnant with twins, she said something along the lines of, you can't have an in utero paternity test, even though that's initially what he wanted her to have.
00:04:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty, just to try to simplify this as much as possible, because we could spend five days talking about, you know, the details of this case. It's pretty remarkable how we got from this sort of one-night hookup. There's just oral sex. There's no penetrative sex to her sending messages, I want to date you. He breaks it off. Once it becomes clear he doesn't want to date her anymore, she then leverages this idea of a pregnancy, sends a positive pregnancy test, goes to this extreme, extreme lengths, doctoring images. We'll get into those details a little bit later, but really gets into some incredible lengths that she goes to to try to prove that she's pregnant and essentially just trying to say, please stay with me or give me a chance and I'll terminate the baby or if you don't, then I won't. It goes so far and this is where I knew things had gone off the rails. She had sent a dating contract, a dating relationship contract to him.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: What in the world?
00:05:32
Speaker 3: Literally, it said if you date me for one week in good faith and give us a real chance going forward, then I'll agree to terminate the baby. It is a, I've never seen anything like it. It's clearly not something that's drafted by a lawyer, no lawyer, whatever, in their right mind, put something like that together. But I mean, just think about how, there's red flags and there's like the ship has sailed. I mean, that was, once I saw that, I knew that we were in for the long haul.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness gracious. So just to go back to my initial thought at the beginning, the 2026 one that she just pleaded guilty towards, that is her basically pleading guilty to the fact that she fabricated a whole bunch of the things that she presented in court.
00:06:22
Speaker 3: Yes. So the criminal laws where I that's that's what I've been practicing for most of my career. This is a it was a 14 count felony indictment that was filed against involving two separate victims, right? So this was a pattern of behavior that had happened before to a man named Greg Gillespie. And then now it has happened to Clayton afterwards. So they combined both of those two cases into one consolidated indictment. So 14 different felonies. She ends up pleading to four counts and she's looking at a sentencing coming up next month. And it is, she could face up to 12 and a half years in prison.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: In both situations, she said that she was pregnant with twins and then got so angry because the guys thought that this night together was a casual hookup and she actually wanted to date them. Is there a reason that she would go with, I'm pregnant with twins?
00:07:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons. She's not unsophisticated in how she handles this. She clearly understands which levers to pull, which lawsuits to file, how to threaten with the most impact. Having twins, a couple things. One, there's a shock and awe factor of it's not just one person you're responsible for, it's two. You should really come around to my side of things. Give me a chance. Try this out because this is even more serious than you might think because there's two babies. Also, there's a real legitimate point that A lot of testing for paternity, a lot of programs won't test for twins because there's a chance, a very small chance, but there's two different fathers for the twins. They want to make sure that it's reliable. And so it's this sort of excuse that she can have built in not to do a paternity test or at least to put it off for as long as possible. This is, Ashley, this is, paternity is one thing where there's a ticking clock on it. I mean, at some point there has to be either a baby or a test, right? So it's not- The most provable thing that there is. But she drags it on. She's able to drag it on for months and months and months.
00:08:37
Speaker 2: What's the point? Do you know her goal here? Was it just to freak them out? Or was there any financial gain that she could have? I just don't understand the overall motive. I understand she was pissed and then she wanted to jerk around with them. But she knows she's going to get caught in the lie eventually. Doesn't she understand that there could be something very bad that she faces legally after it all?
00:09:07
Speaker 3: Maybe, but there hadn't been any consequences before, right? I mean, she's been able to bully and pressure and lie and kind of manipulate her way through the court system before. The case with Greg Gillespie beforehand, there were no criminal charges she was filed with at that time. In fact, she received a restraining order against him that that had been renewed multiple times after that. So she was, she was very credible in her lies. She doesn't, you know, she wasn't caught previously. So no, there were no consequences for her. So I think that's certainly where she thought that she could sort of rinse and repeat this behavior with more people. The problem she ran into in this case is she picked way too high profile of an individual and the internet, as they say, always wins. And so they, you know, the, the citizen sleuths the the bachelor nation i mean truly you remember in this case you know clayton didn't have the resources to hire an attorney so when this first started he had just got his his real estate license he didn't people think there's a lot of money there coming from the bachelor but he didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer and it really snowballed against him in court until he had a lawyer And if he didn't finally get representation, if he didn't have all this sort of, I don't say public support, but, you know, internet, you know, free internet lawyers that were out there doing the investigation, you know, may have turned out differently. So it really did take, it took all of this online pressure and ultimately resources from a GoFundMe account to help pay for a lawyer to put this all together and give us this remarkable, terrifying story.
00:10:45
Speaker 2: Well, now he's got Dancing on Cameo making him over 100,000 a year, he says. And then now he's got this podcast, which is top 10. And now he'll probably have a Netflix documentary.
00:10:57
Speaker 3: Think about how, what is, you know, I haven't followed The Bachelor all too much, but I certainly know his story, right? I certainly know his story and what his reputation was from that season that he was The Bachelor and it was not great. And you want to talk about how you can do a 180 Now, he certainly had to go through the ringer, but if you want somebody to become sympathetic, make them the victim of this kind of madness. It's such a personal, sensitive, really dirty scheme to pull somebody in, to try to pull somebody into a relationship, to fake sonograms and and pregnancy tests, it's such a personal thing that it triggers anybody, anybody who's a parent or has thought about being a parent, the idea of using that against somebody, no matter who they are is, I understand that it's triggering. One of the text messages or comments from this girl, Laura, was something like, she's trying to prove that she's actually pregnant and that it's his, and she says, If it turns out that I'm not pregnant, I'll pay you $ 100, 000 or something like that, trying to tell him that I'm really serious. And at the end of the day, she ends up paying him like $ 150, 000. So the only thing she said that was true was that she's going to pay him all that money. Just not the way she thought she was.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: I have a stupid question. But when somebody sues somebody for money that say they don't have in the bank, where does the money come from?
00:12:36
Speaker 3: If you're what we call judgment proof, right in the legal world, it doesn't really come from anywhere, right? There's not money to get. So you'll have a default judgment, or a civil judgment, sorry, in a civil case. And that's something that can be, you can get future wage garnishment, or she has property, you can get a levy on it, or if they have There's all kinds of ways to try to collect, but if the money is not there, it's not there, right? You can just sort of collect on it over time with whatever resources are there. If she comes into money later, you know, she inherits money from her parents or something like that, you can execute that judgment a little bit later. In the criminal case, there's restitution. So there'll be criminal restitution and she'll be through probation or parole. She'll have to, you know, We'll find out what she can pay per month, and then she'll be required to pay it. Sometimes if they don't have any money, it's $ 20 a month, $ 100 a month, whatever it might be. There's no way to really fully pay off the judgment entirely. But it's always there. And if she doesn't make any effort to pay, she can go back into custody. So there's two different ways to collect on it.
00:13:42
Speaker 2: Okay. What is she sentenced to right now after taking this plea?
00:13:47
Speaker 3: Great question. So her sentence is coming up. So we don't have an actual sentence yet. I think her sentencing date is October 23rd. And she's pled to four felonies. Three of them are already... There's an agreement where she's going to get probation on three of them. So there's really only one count of the sentencing that the judge is going to be considering a custody sentence. And that has a... Um, that's the fraudulent schemes and artifices. It's the, it's count one. It's the first one against Clayton. And it's generally for the whole shebang, right? This is an entire fraudulent scheme. Let's consider everything that she's done over all of this time, which gives the judge a lot of discretion. And there is no agreement between the parties on what the sentence is going to be, meaning that her attorneys can come and ask for probation. His attorneys can ask for 12 and a half years, up to 12 and a half years, which is the maximum if there's a bunch of aggravating factors. And so when we get to the sentencing, the probation department will have a recommendation. The defense will have a recommendation. The DA's office will have a recommendation. And the judge is going to have to make a decision. I mean, the presumptive on that charge is five years in state prison. That's the presumptive. If the judge thinks there's enough mitigation, it can go down to three years. If there's a lot of aggravating factors, it can go up to 12 and a half. And the judge can kind of go anywhere in between. Mm-hmm.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: Very interesting.
00:15:11
Speaker 3: It'll be really interesting to see what happens because this is such a... Judges don't look favorably upon people who abuse the court system. And there's already been judges that have found that she lied during her testimony on her oath, that she's fraudulently doctored documents. They even tried to get one of the judges removed from the case because they said there was prejudice. When you start going after the judiciary and the credibility of the court system, judges really... They really take offense to that. So I can't imagine this will be a overly sympathetic courtroom.
00:15:47
Speaker 2: She also pleaded guilty to taking the identity of another. What is that from?
00:15:51
Speaker 3: That's from the doctored ultrasound or sonogram.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: That's what I figured.
00:15:59
Speaker 3: It's a pretty personal thing.
00:16:03
Speaker 2: Because it's somebody else's sonogram she stole.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: It wasn't an AI creation. It was somebody else.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:09
Speaker 3: So there's a couple of different types of sonograms and documents that she doctored and used. But one of them was a, you know, one was taken from a YouTube video six or seven years ago, something like that. And she just changed, you know, she just put her name instead of the other person's name. And, you know, so she just took it as her own, right? And that's proof that it's hers. And most of what she's done is, you know, just internet research. You're not diving, right? And just trying to find ways to pretend to prove that this is there. But she has been chips all in from the beginning. And it took a criminal conviction and a restraining order to get her to stop. It's pretty wild.
00:16:51
Speaker 2: Do you know it's another penalty or another ding that she's going to have on her? Honestly, I don't know if she's ever going to find a husband or a family after all of this. And it seems like, so that's something she is desperate for. And I don't think Eddie's going to, anybody will give her the time of day. Our producer is texting me. You'd be surprised.
00:17:13
Speaker 3: Look, I have, I have clients that are, you know, in custody or in prison or whatever. And some of them get letters from, from fans and from people that have followed their stories and they offer romance in whatever ways that you, that you might think. And so, you know, she may, She even in custody, who knows people, there are all kinds of people out there.
00:17:35
Speaker 2: Clayton did, uh, he did, he took a step where he made sure throughout her entire craziness to document everything, every text, every email I get, I don't know if there was any voice calls. When would you suggest that somebody start documenting if they're ever in a situation like this.
00:17:59
Speaker 3: Right now? Yeah. Like at the very, very.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: Beginning, like the second the guy says, she goes, I'd like you to sign this paper that tells you that I just want one week of a chance.
00:18:12
Speaker 3: One week, one week trial relationship, but it has to be in good faith. You have to be a good faith attempt. I mean, that sounds like a reality show in and of itself.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
00:18:25
Speaker 3: Or you have to keep the baby. It's pretty remarkable. But no, keep the receipts. That's the first thing that any lawyer would tell you, right? Keep the receipts. Don't delete messages. First time there's a red flag or anything like that, you start recording. You find out when they're calling, how often they're calling. Screenshot. Clayton did the right thing, and it's made all the difference in this case. Because when you read the emails, you read the text messages, the story comes into a full picture.
00:18:51
Speaker 2: Did the other guy.
00:18:54
Speaker 3: A lot less. A lot less. In his case, it got really aggressive and really serious, and there were rape allegations and domestic violence allegations, and it really went pretty far. But it wasn't until people were able to see this pattern of behavior that you can make a determination. When you're in court and a woman is in there saying, I've been choked, or I am pregnant, here's my, here's the sonogram of my baby and I'm a victim here. Everybody, I think everybody's reasonable belief is to, is to trust that person because who would come in and lie about that? And so it's, and she was in court under oath testifying to these things. And I don't blame any judge who, who hears that, who listens to her statement and, and sides with her. It's, you know, if you don't have all the other information, you're just going off of that. Of course, I think you'd defer to protecting someone in that position.
00:19:53
Speaker 2: When did the other guy come out of the woodwork when he saw a public figure being faced with the same situation?
00:20:00
Speaker 3: The lawyer for Greg, when the story first broke about Clayton's, one of the... I think the employees in his firm showed him the story and said, look at this. Can you believe, doesn't this remind you of, of our other case? And he said, doesn't just remind me that's the same person. And he put those together right away when it came in, he reached out to Greg and they said, we, you know, we, we know what the, what the, what the MO is here and what Clayton's going to be in for. I mean, they, they knew it was a battle and this is, It was pretty incredible. And Clayton couldn't afford to bring him in right away, right? It would have been pretty incredible if he could have just got him in to help with the case right from the beginning. But it wasn't until they had the GoFundMe that he could actually hire him. Wow.
00:20:49
Speaker 2: And then I also think that there was some communication between Greg's girlfriend and Clayton via DM.
00:20:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the first person that reached out to Clayton. So Greg's girlfriend sent him a message. He thought, okay, now this is in some of his interviews, Clayton has said, you know, a light bulb went off, right? This was a moment that he thought, okay, now I'm pretty convinced that this is a pattern of behavior and not just, you know, I'm not alone in this battle. So he, that she reached out to him first, then there was some communication that he ended up talking to Greg and they realized how similar these situations were.
00:21:37
Speaker 2: Because Laura took a plea deal, do you think that she'll have a lighter sentence? Is that an automatic thing usually?
00:21:44
Speaker 3: She'll have a lighter sentence than if she is convicted of 14 felonies after a trial and how horrendous her behavior is. And good luck finding an impartial jury in a case like that. I mean, it's pretty incredible. And look, what she did was she pled to the four felonies with probation on the table. And that's the most important thing for her lawyer, for her, she has a chance to argue for probation, meaning no prison time. A judge can give her probation and up to 365 days in county jail, but that's if the judge decides to give her probation. If she's convicted of all these other felonies, there's no way she's avoiding prison time. So at least now she has a fighting shot. She can come in, she can argue for probation. She has no prior criminal history. And maybe there's I'm going to take a wild guess here. Maybe there's some mental health issues that she's going through.
00:22:38
Speaker 2: Wild guess.
00:22:40
Speaker 3: Without knowing her personal situation, I feel pretty comfortable with that. So they'll come in. They'll argue for all of those reasons. It's better to have her get treatment or whatever it might be. And so now she has a shot. But it's hard to imagine her avoiding some present time here.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Her parents... aren't, say, involved, but she did live with them during this time. Does that mean anything for them?
00:23:09
Speaker 3: The family's been remarkably silent during this whole process. Her dad's a public figure. He's a Radio Hall of Fame broadcaster.
00:23:17
Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
00:23:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: Because when I typed in her name earlier just to see a picture, it was like the daughter of so-and-so.
00:23:24
Speaker 3: Right. He's a Radio Hall of Famer. He's a a very well-known person in the Bay Area. And her mom is a podcaster too. And they have just been very, very quiet during this entire process. And whether that comes into, can they be financially responsible for some of the things that she's doing? That's a little bit of a leap for these kinds of cases, but it doesn't mean that they're not concerned about that. I mean, I certainly would be.
00:23:54
Speaker 2: Do you see, I see Clayton has already won his civil case against her back in 2024. Has Greg done anything? Is Greg trying to seek justice in any way? Or is there any other way that Clayton can?
00:24:08
Speaker 3: Well, Greg is the victim in the criminal case, right? So he is getting justice in terms of the criminal case. There'll be a restitution order for him as well for all the expenses that he's had to pay in defending himself. So he is getting justice that way. But He's really tried, I think, not to be involved in this litigation with her. You know, not even, you know, as far as I know right now, hasn't contested even the restraining order that was filed against him. Because to do that, you would have to go bring her back into court and be in court with her again. And he's, I think he's tried to keep his, just to try to stay away from her as much as possible. But the district attorney's office has handled that for him, thankfully. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker 2: Anything else from a lawyer's point of view that you think is super interesting about the case and worth putting out there right now?
00:24:56
Speaker 3: Besides everything about this, I mean, there are a couple of things that I found interesting. The sheer volume of communications, right? Hundreds and hundreds of text every day, 1, 2, 10, 20, over time, probably thousands of messages that were sent. her calling from 12 different phone numbers after he blocks her. These are all things that we look for in a restraining order. They're kind of black and white. I mean, if you start calling somebody from 12 different numbers because you've been blocked 11 times, that's telling you pretty quickly that the person doesn't want to talk to you. So that's enough in most restraining order cases to get it granted. And so the sheer volume in and of itself is pretty shocking. Another thing is she went after, right when this started, he was her realtor. That's how this kind of started. She reached out to him. She said she was looking for some commercial property or investment property. And it was his first ever client, right? He just got his real estate license. Imagine your first day on the job, right? Your very first client. I can't. And it turns into this like, it's his very first client. He's thinking he's going to get his very first sale. It gets crazy just from the get-go. And then she goes after his real estate license. And so she actually, for anybody that has a professional license, any doctor, lawyer, real estate, whatever you might be, nurse, teacher, somebody goes after your credential, it's about as scary and terrifying as it gets, right? You put so much time and energy and money and resources into getting that license. And she went after his real estate license right from the beginning and not really set the tone for what she's capable of, right? If she's willing to go after your career right off the bat, she's willing to go anywhere. So I found that to be you know, terrifying.
00:26:43
Speaker 2: She obviously set this networking date up because he was the bachelor too. And there has been findings now that she had been a viewer.
00:26:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. She's, she, his like profile photo on LinkedIn or whatever it might be was his bachelor photo. Right. So it's not as if there's a big secret to who he was. I mean, his bachelor photo was, was his LinkedIn profile. So, you know, she was, she sought him out. She reached out to him, She said, you know, let's, can you help me with this? I know that you're in this profession. So it's very, it's not that they met on the street, you know, at her bar or something like that. I mean, he, she sought him out. So, you know, this is, this is definitely a plan they had. There's also some, some interesting things that have, that have happened throughout. I just want to talk briefly about the difference between having an attorney versus not having an attorney. He had two back-to-back hearings. He had written the restraining order. He tried to go in on, When on his own restraining order without an attorney, the judge gave him a week to get counsel. The next day he was in court on her restraining order against him. He goes unrepresented pro se and just doesn't understand what the judge is asking for. Right. She had an attorney. He didn't. What the what the judge is asking for, what kinds of questions to ask. And he ends up losing that with all this rage. avalanche of evidence and all of these messages and all these emails and this clear behavior, he loses that hearing. It's a difference between having a lawyer and not having a lawyer. And the next time he went into court for his restraining order, he had done the crowdfunding. He has his own lawyer. Not only does he win the restraining order, but the lawyer he had hired, she comes in and grills Laura on cross-examination. And part of that testimony is what's used to convict her later on. So it's between him losing and her being convicted of a crime later on was the difference between having a lawyer and not having a lawyer. And it's just, you know, even when the facts are stacked in your favor, it just, it was so clear to watch it. And it's just unfortunate, right? Because not everybody can afford to have counsel in restraining order hearings. You're not entitled to a public defender. And so you have to pay for your own attorneys and think how many people are out there getting restraining orders filed against them. They can't hire a lawyer. They walk in, they've never been in a courtroom before. They don't know what to say or do. And they're going up against a buzzsaw. And, you know, even the wackiest, most outrageous kinds of cases can lead to, you know, restraining orders, loss of your rights, whatever it might be. So it was tough to see, but I'm glad that, you know, the truth came out.
00:29:19
Speaker 2: Ryan, you just made me feel so much better about paying my lawyer bill yesterday because it was hefty. And that's just a contract. That's just an entertainment contract, lawyer. But thank you. Thank you for making me feel better. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was fascinating. And if you guys are observant, with this, make sure to go listen to Clayton's podcast. Love trapped. Go listen to Love Trapped. It's wherever you find podcasts. We're very happy for him for getting vindication on all of this, justice, and then also a hit podcast. So, and Ryan, thank you so much for your expertise. It really did clarify some things.
00:30:01
Speaker 3: You're welcome, Ashley, anytime.
00:30:02
Speaker 2: All right, see ya.
00:30:04
Speaker 1: Bye.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: Until next time, guys, I've been Ashley. Toodaloo.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: Follow the Ben and Ashley Eye Almost Famous Podcast on iHeartRadio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast with iHeartRadio.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Almost Famous Podcast. It's Ashley, and today we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive on the Clayton Eckert fraternity fraud case involving Laura Owens. So she was just, she pled guilty in a criminal case, which is one of the reasons that this case has been brought up again. And simultaneously, Clayton has quite a hit podcast in telling the story. So we have a guest today. He has practiced criminal law for nearly 15 years, and he's served as a legal expert on CNN and KTLA in LA. Please welcome to the podcast, Ryan Kearns, to help us understand this case a little bit better. Hey, Ryan.
00:00:50
Speaker 3: Hi, Ashley. Thanks for having me on. This is certainly an adventure of a case. For anybody that's been a lawyer and that's practiced in criminal or practiced in family law, I mean, this touches every part of our legal system. And it is PTSD moments, I think, for a lot of lawyers that are listening to this podcast, seeing how far things can unravel and get out of hand. It's been an amazing, amazing story.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of parts. There's a lot of details. Just to break down for simplicity's sake, can you tell our audience how there's been two trials now with Clayton and this woman? One has been civil, and that was closed in 2024. And one, she just currently pled guilty during, and that was a criminal case.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: So there's actually been more than that. So there's the initial civil paternity case, which was how this whole thing started. where Laura filed for paternity. That case ended in a verdict for Clayton and nearly $ 150, 000 in attorney's fees for him, which is pretty remarkable. There's also restraining order cases. So there were dueling restraining orders involving both Laura and Clayton, initially granted for both of them. And then after the paternity, the civil case in the paternity, it was referred actually by the judge in that civil case to Maricopa County prosecutors for criminal evaluation. That led to the criminal charges and the plea agreement that just came out last week. So there's, it's, when I say it's kind of touched everything, it's touched family law, it's touched restraining orders, it's touched criminal, really everything you can get to in a dispute like this. So it's been pretty amazing.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: The way that I'm trying to simplify it in my head is that the 2024, the one that, like, the big one is that he.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: Sued her in civil court so that he could clear his name of any things that she was accusing him of, right?
00:02:53
Speaker 3: Right. You wanted to continue the, you actually filed motions to continue the paternity case even after there was, after she had said there was a non-viable, there was no longer a baby, it was not viable. And so there shouldn't be a paternity case even after she's the one who filed it. And he had filed motions to continue that because he wanted proof. He wanted there to be an actual court decision that said you were never pregnant. And if you were, it was not mine because the saga has, you know, he's never gotten a straight answer or a court decision. That's that's confirmed that despite, you know, all this time trying to get, you know, some real answers. So he's, he pushed really hard for, for all of that. Even after the case was technically moved because there wasn't a baby anymore.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: She accused him of getting her pregnant, even though they never had penetrative, as I look around for making my son, son in the room, sex. Um, they was, she said that you were a little bit woozy that day. You took a gummy. You don't know what actually happened. And then said that he got her pregnant, um, with twins and, on one night. And then because of that, because she said that she was pregnant with twins, she said something along the lines of, you can't have an in utero paternity test, even though that's initially what he wanted her to have.
00:04:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty, just to try to simplify this as much as possible, because we could spend five days talking about, you know, the details of this case. It's pretty remarkable how we got from this sort of one-night hookup. There's just oral sex. There's no penetrative sex to her sending messages, I want to date you. He breaks it off. Once it becomes clear he doesn't want to date her anymore, she then leverages this idea of a pregnancy, sends a positive pregnancy test, goes to this extreme, extreme lengths, doctoring images. We'll get into those details a little bit later, but really gets into some incredible lengths that she goes to to try to prove that she's pregnant and essentially just trying to say, please stay with me or give me a chance and I'll terminate the baby or if you don't, then I won't. It goes so far and this is where I knew things had gone off the rails. She had sent a dating contract, a dating relationship contract to him.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: What in the world?
00:05:32
Speaker 3: Literally, it said if you date me for one week in good faith and give us a real chance going forward, then I'll agree to terminate the baby. It is a, I've never seen anything like it. It's clearly not something that's drafted by a lawyer, no lawyer, whatever, in their right mind, put something like that together. But I mean, just think about how, there's red flags and there's like the ship has sailed. I mean, that was, once I saw that, I knew that we were in for the long haul.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness gracious. So just to go back to my initial thought at the beginning, the 2026 one that she just pleaded guilty towards, that is her basically pleading guilty to the fact that she fabricated a whole bunch of the things that she presented in court.
00:06:22
Speaker 3: Yes. So the criminal laws where I that's that's what I've been practicing for most of my career. This is a it was a 14 count felony indictment that was filed against involving two separate victims, right? So this was a pattern of behavior that had happened before to a man named Greg Gillespie. And then now it has happened to Clayton afterwards. So they combined both of those two cases into one consolidated indictment. So 14 different felonies. She ends up pleading to four counts and she's looking at a sentencing coming up next month. And it is, she could face up to 12 and a half years in prison.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: In both situations, she said that she was pregnant with twins and then got so angry because the guys thought that this night together was a casual hookup and she actually wanted to date them. Is there a reason that she would go with, I'm pregnant with twins?
00:07:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons. She's not unsophisticated in how she handles this. She clearly understands which levers to pull, which lawsuits to file, how to threaten with the most impact. Having twins, a couple things. One, there's a shock and awe factor of it's not just one person you're responsible for, it's two. You should really come around to my side of things. Give me a chance. Try this out because this is even more serious than you might think because there's two babies. Also, there's a real legitimate point that A lot of testing for paternity, a lot of programs won't test for twins because there's a chance, a very small chance, but there's two different fathers for the twins. They want to make sure that it's reliable. And so it's this sort of excuse that she can have built in not to do a paternity test or at least to put it off for as long as possible. This is, Ashley, this is, paternity is one thing where there's a ticking clock on it. I mean, at some point there has to be either a baby or a test, right? So it's not- The most provable thing that there is. But she drags it on. She's able to drag it on for months and months and months.
00:08:37
Speaker 2: What's the point? Do you know her goal here? Was it just to freak them out? Or was there any financial gain that she could have? I just don't understand the overall motive. I understand she was pissed and then she wanted to jerk around with them. But she knows she's going to get caught in the lie eventually. Doesn't she understand that there could be something very bad that she faces legally after it all?
00:09:07
Speaker 3: Maybe, but there hadn't been any consequences before, right? I mean, she's been able to bully and pressure and lie and kind of manipulate her way through the court system before. The case with Greg Gillespie beforehand, there were no criminal charges she was filed with at that time. In fact, she received a restraining order against him that that had been renewed multiple times after that. So she was, she was very credible in her lies. She doesn't, you know, she wasn't caught previously. So no, there were no consequences for her. So I think that's certainly where she thought that she could sort of rinse and repeat this behavior with more people. The problem she ran into in this case is she picked way too high profile of an individual and the internet, as they say, always wins. And so they, you know, the, the citizen sleuths the the bachelor nation i mean truly you remember in this case you know clayton didn't have the resources to hire an attorney so when this first started he had just got his his real estate license he didn't people think there's a lot of money there coming from the bachelor but he didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer and it really snowballed against him in court until he had a lawyer And if he didn't finally get representation, if he didn't have all this sort of, I don't say public support, but, you know, internet, you know, free internet lawyers that were out there doing the investigation, you know, may have turned out differently. So it really did take, it took all of this online pressure and ultimately resources from a GoFundMe account to help pay for a lawyer to put this all together and give us this remarkable, terrifying story.
00:10:45
Speaker 2: Well, now he's got Dancing on Cameo making him over 100,000 a year, he says. And then now he's got this podcast, which is top 10. And now he'll probably have a Netflix documentary.
00:10:57
Speaker 3: Think about how, what is, you know, I haven't followed The Bachelor all too much, but I certainly know his story, right? I certainly know his story and what his reputation was from that season that he was The Bachelor and it was not great. And you want to talk about how you can do a 180 Now, he certainly had to go through the ringer, but if you want somebody to become sympathetic, make them the victim of this kind of madness. It's such a personal, sensitive, really dirty scheme to pull somebody in, to try to pull somebody into a relationship, to fake sonograms and and pregnancy tests, it's such a personal thing that it triggers anybody, anybody who's a parent or has thought about being a parent, the idea of using that against somebody, no matter who they are is, I understand that it's triggering. One of the text messages or comments from this girl, Laura, was something like, she's trying to prove that she's actually pregnant and that it's his, and she says, If it turns out that I'm not pregnant, I'll pay you $ 100, 000 or something like that, trying to tell him that I'm really serious. And at the end of the day, she ends up paying him like $ 150, 000. So the only thing she said that was true was that she's going to pay him all that money. Just not the way she thought she was.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: I have a stupid question. But when somebody sues somebody for money that say they don't have in the bank, where does the money come from?
00:12:36
Speaker 3: If you're what we call judgment proof, right in the legal world, it doesn't really come from anywhere, right? There's not money to get. So you'll have a default judgment, or a civil judgment, sorry, in a civil case. And that's something that can be, you can get future wage garnishment, or she has property, you can get a levy on it, or if they have There's all kinds of ways to try to collect, but if the money is not there, it's not there, right? You can just sort of collect on it over time with whatever resources are there. If she comes into money later, you know, she inherits money from her parents or something like that, you can execute that judgment a little bit later. In the criminal case, there's restitution. So there'll be criminal restitution and she'll be through probation or parole. She'll have to, you know, We'll find out what she can pay per month, and then she'll be required to pay it. Sometimes if they don't have any money, it's $ 20 a month, $ 100 a month, whatever it might be. There's no way to really fully pay off the judgment entirely. But it's always there. And if she doesn't make any effort to pay, she can go back into custody. So there's two different ways to collect on it.
00:13:42
Speaker 2: Okay. What is she sentenced to right now after taking this plea?
00:13:47
Speaker 3: Great question. So her sentence is coming up. So we don't have an actual sentence yet. I think her sentencing date is October 23rd. And she's pled to four felonies. Three of them are already... There's an agreement where she's going to get probation on three of them. So there's really only one count of the sentencing that the judge is going to be considering a custody sentence. And that has a... Um, that's the fraudulent schemes and artifices. It's the, it's count one. It's the first one against Clayton. And it's generally for the whole shebang, right? This is an entire fraudulent scheme. Let's consider everything that she's done over all of this time, which gives the judge a lot of discretion. And there is no agreement between the parties on what the sentence is going to be, meaning that her attorneys can come and ask for probation. His attorneys can ask for 12 and a half years, up to 12 and a half years, which is the maximum if there's a bunch of aggravating factors. And so when we get to the sentencing, the probation department will have a recommendation. The defense will have a recommendation. The DA's office will have a recommendation. And the judge is going to have to make a decision. I mean, the presumptive on that charge is five years in state prison. That's the presumptive. If the judge thinks there's enough mitigation, it can go down to three years. If there's a lot of aggravating factors, it can go up to 12 and a half. And the judge can kind of go anywhere in between. Mm-hmm.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: Very interesting.
00:15:11
Speaker 3: It'll be really interesting to see what happens because this is such a... Judges don't look favorably upon people who abuse the court system. And there's already been judges that have found that she lied during her testimony on her oath, that she's fraudulently doctored documents. They even tried to get one of the judges removed from the case because they said there was prejudice. When you start going after the judiciary and the credibility of the court system, judges really... They really take offense to that. So I can't imagine this will be a overly sympathetic courtroom.
00:15:47
Speaker 2: She also pleaded guilty to taking the identity of another. What is that from?
00:15:51
Speaker 3: That's from the doctored ultrasound or sonogram.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: That's what I figured.
00:15:59
Speaker 3: It's a pretty personal thing.
00:16:03
Speaker 2: Because it's somebody else's sonogram she stole.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: It wasn't an AI creation. It was somebody else.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:09
Speaker 3: So there's a couple of different types of sonograms and documents that she doctored and used. But one of them was a, you know, one was taken from a YouTube video six or seven years ago, something like that. And she just changed, you know, she just put her name instead of the other person's name. And, you know, so she just took it as her own, right? And that's proof that it's hers. And most of what she's done is, you know, just internet research. You're not diving, right? And just trying to find ways to pretend to prove that this is there. But she has been chips all in from the beginning. And it took a criminal conviction and a restraining order to get her to stop. It's pretty wild.
00:16:51
Speaker 2: Do you know it's another penalty or another ding that she's going to have on her? Honestly, I don't know if she's ever going to find a husband or a family after all of this. And it seems like, so that's something she is desperate for. And I don't think Eddie's going to, anybody will give her the time of day. Our producer is texting me. You'd be surprised.
00:17:13
Speaker 3: Look, I have, I have clients that are, you know, in custody or in prison or whatever. And some of them get letters from, from fans and from people that have followed their stories and they offer romance in whatever ways that you, that you might think. And so, you know, she may, She even in custody, who knows people, there are all kinds of people out there.
00:17:35
Speaker 2: Clayton did, uh, he did, he took a step where he made sure throughout her entire craziness to document everything, every text, every email I get, I don't know if there was any voice calls. When would you suggest that somebody start documenting if they're ever in a situation like this.
00:17:59
Speaker 3: Right now? Yeah. Like at the very, very.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: Beginning, like the second the guy says, she goes, I'd like you to sign this paper that tells you that I just want one week of a chance.
00:18:12
Speaker 3: One week, one week trial relationship, but it has to be in good faith. You have to be a good faith attempt. I mean, that sounds like a reality show in and of itself.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
00:18:25
Speaker 3: Or you have to keep the baby. It's pretty remarkable. But no, keep the receipts. That's the first thing that any lawyer would tell you, right? Keep the receipts. Don't delete messages. First time there's a red flag or anything like that, you start recording. You find out when they're calling, how often they're calling. Screenshot. Clayton did the right thing, and it's made all the difference in this case. Because when you read the emails, you read the text messages, the story comes into a full picture.
00:18:51
Speaker 2: Did the other guy.
00:18:54
Speaker 3: A lot less. A lot less. In his case, it got really aggressive and really serious, and there were rape allegations and domestic violence allegations, and it really went pretty far. But it wasn't until people were able to see this pattern of behavior that you can make a determination. When you're in court and a woman is in there saying, I've been choked, or I am pregnant, here's my, here's the sonogram of my baby and I'm a victim here. Everybody, I think everybody's reasonable belief is to, is to trust that person because who would come in and lie about that? And so it's, and she was in court under oath testifying to these things. And I don't blame any judge who, who hears that, who listens to her statement and, and sides with her. It's, you know, if you don't have all the other information, you're just going off of that. Of course, I think you'd defer to protecting someone in that position.
00:19:53
Speaker 2: When did the other guy come out of the woodwork when he saw a public figure being faced with the same situation?
00:20:00
Speaker 3: The lawyer for Greg, when the story first broke about Clayton's, one of the... I think the employees in his firm showed him the story and said, look at this. Can you believe, doesn't this remind you of, of our other case? And he said, doesn't just remind me that's the same person. And he put those together right away when it came in, he reached out to Greg and they said, we, you know, we, we know what the, what the, what the MO is here and what Clayton's going to be in for. I mean, they, they knew it was a battle and this is, It was pretty incredible. And Clayton couldn't afford to bring him in right away, right? It would have been pretty incredible if he could have just got him in to help with the case right from the beginning. But it wasn't until they had the GoFundMe that he could actually hire him. Wow.
00:20:49
Speaker 2: And then I also think that there was some communication between Greg's girlfriend and Clayton via DM.
00:20:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the first person that reached out to Clayton. So Greg's girlfriend sent him a message. He thought, okay, now this is in some of his interviews, Clayton has said, you know, a light bulb went off, right? This was a moment that he thought, okay, now I'm pretty convinced that this is a pattern of behavior and not just, you know, I'm not alone in this battle. So he, that she reached out to him first, then there was some communication that he ended up talking to Greg and they realized how similar these situations were.
00:21:37
Speaker 2: Because Laura took a plea deal, do you think that she'll have a lighter sentence? Is that an automatic thing usually?
00:21:44
Speaker 3: She'll have a lighter sentence than if she is convicted of 14 felonies after a trial and how horrendous her behavior is. And good luck finding an impartial jury in a case like that. I mean, it's pretty incredible. And look, what she did was she pled to the four felonies with probation on the table. And that's the most important thing for her lawyer, for her, she has a chance to argue for probation, meaning no prison time. A judge can give her probation and up to 365 days in county jail, but that's if the judge decides to give her probation. If she's convicted of all these other felonies, there's no way she's avoiding prison time. So at least now she has a fighting shot. She can come in, she can argue for probation. She has no prior criminal history. And maybe there's I'm going to take a wild guess here. Maybe there's some mental health issues that she's going through.
00:22:38
Speaker 2: Wild guess.
00:22:40
Speaker 3: Without knowing her personal situation, I feel pretty comfortable with that. So they'll come in. They'll argue for all of those reasons. It's better to have her get treatment or whatever it might be. And so now she has a shot. But it's hard to imagine her avoiding some present time here.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Her parents... aren't, say, involved, but she did live with them during this time. Does that mean anything for them?
00:23:09
Speaker 3: The family's been remarkably silent during this whole process. Her dad's a public figure. He's a Radio Hall of Fame broadcaster.
00:23:17
Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
00:23:18
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: Because when I typed in her name earlier just to see a picture, it was like the daughter of so-and-so.
00:23:24
Speaker 3: Right. He's a Radio Hall of Famer. He's a a very well-known person in the Bay Area. And her mom is a podcaster too. And they have just been very, very quiet during this entire process. And whether that comes into, can they be financially responsible for some of the things that she's doing? That's a little bit of a leap for these kinds of cases, but it doesn't mean that they're not concerned about that. I mean, I certainly would be.
00:23:54
Speaker 2: Do you see, I see Clayton has already won his civil case against her back in 2024. Has Greg done anything? Is Greg trying to seek justice in any way? Or is there any other way that Clayton can?
00:24:08
Speaker 3: Well, Greg is the victim in the criminal case, right? So he is getting justice in terms of the criminal case. There'll be a restitution order for him as well for all the expenses that he's had to pay in defending himself. So he is getting justice that way. But He's really tried, I think, not to be involved in this litigation with her. You know, not even, you know, as far as I know right now, hasn't contested even the restraining order that was filed against him. Because to do that, you would have to go bring her back into court and be in court with her again. And he's, I think he's tried to keep his, just to try to stay away from her as much as possible. But the district attorney's office has handled that for him, thankfully. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker 2: Anything else from a lawyer's point of view that you think is super interesting about the case and worth putting out there right now?
00:24:56
Speaker 3: Besides everything about this, I mean, there are a couple of things that I found interesting. The sheer volume of communications, right? Hundreds and hundreds of text every day, 1, 2, 10, 20, over time, probably thousands of messages that were sent. her calling from 12 different phone numbers after he blocks her. These are all things that we look for in a restraining order. They're kind of black and white. I mean, if you start calling somebody from 12 different numbers because you've been blocked 11 times, that's telling you pretty quickly that the person doesn't want to talk to you. So that's enough in most restraining order cases to get it granted. And so the sheer volume in and of itself is pretty shocking. Another thing is she went after, right when this started, he was her realtor. That's how this kind of started. She reached out to him. She said she was looking for some commercial property or investment property. And it was his first ever client, right? He just got his real estate license. Imagine your first day on the job, right? Your very first client. I can't. And it turns into this like, it's his very first client. He's thinking he's going to get his very first sale. It gets crazy just from the get-go. And then she goes after his real estate license. And so she actually, for anybody that has a professional license, any doctor, lawyer, real estate, whatever you might be, nurse, teacher, somebody goes after your credential, it's about as scary and terrifying as it gets, right? You put so much time and energy and money and resources into getting that license. And she went after his real estate license right from the beginning and not really set the tone for what she's capable of, right? If she's willing to go after your career right off the bat, she's willing to go anywhere. So I found that to be you know, terrifying.
00:26:43
Speaker 2: She obviously set this networking date up because he was the bachelor too. And there has been findings now that she had been a viewer.
00:26:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. She's, she, his like profile photo on LinkedIn or whatever it might be was his bachelor photo. Right. So it's not as if there's a big secret to who he was. I mean, his bachelor photo was, was his LinkedIn profile. So, you know, she was, she sought him out. She reached out to him, She said, you know, let's, can you help me with this? I know that you're in this profession. So it's very, it's not that they met on the street, you know, at her bar or something like that. I mean, he, she sought him out. So, you know, this is, this is definitely a plan they had. There's also some, some interesting things that have, that have happened throughout. I just want to talk briefly about the difference between having an attorney versus not having an attorney. He had two back-to-back hearings. He had written the restraining order. He tried to go in on, When on his own restraining order without an attorney, the judge gave him a week to get counsel. The next day he was in court on her restraining order against him. He goes unrepresented pro se and just doesn't understand what the judge is asking for. Right. She had an attorney. He didn't. What the what the judge is asking for, what kinds of questions to ask. And he ends up losing that with all this rage. avalanche of evidence and all of these messages and all these emails and this clear behavior, he loses that hearing. It's a difference between having a lawyer and not having a lawyer. And the next time he went into court for his restraining order, he had done the crowdfunding. He has his own lawyer. Not only does he win the restraining order, but the lawyer he had hired, she comes in and grills Laura on cross-examination. And part of that testimony is what's used to convict her later on. So it's between him losing and her being convicted of a crime later on was the difference between having a lawyer and not having a lawyer. And it's just, you know, even when the facts are stacked in your favor, it just, it was so clear to watch it. And it's just unfortunate, right? Because not everybody can afford to have counsel in restraining order hearings. You're not entitled to a public defender. And so you have to pay for your own attorneys and think how many people are out there getting restraining orders filed against them. They can't hire a lawyer. They walk in, they've never been in a courtroom before. They don't know what to say or do. And they're going up against a buzzsaw. And, you know, even the wackiest, most outrageous kinds of cases can lead to, you know, restraining orders, loss of your rights, whatever it might be. So it was tough to see, but I'm glad that, you know, the truth came out.
00:29:19
Speaker 2: Ryan, you just made me feel so much better about paying my lawyer bill yesterday because it was hefty. And that's just a contract. That's just an entertainment contract, lawyer. But thank you. Thank you for making me feel better. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was fascinating. And if you guys are observant, with this, make sure to go listen to Clayton's podcast. Love trapped. Go listen to Love Trapped. It's wherever you find podcasts. We're very happy for him for getting vindication on all of this, justice, and then also a hit podcast. So, and Ryan, thank you so much for your expertise. It really did clarify some things.
00:30:01
Speaker 3: You're welcome, Ashley, anytime.
00:30:02
Speaker 2: All right, see ya.
00:30:04
Speaker 1: Bye.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: Until next time, guys, I've been Ashley. Toodaloo.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: Follow the Ben and Ashley Eye Almost Famous Podcast on iHeartRadio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
