A Colorado Spring hairdresser was forced to hire a private investigator after police wrongly accused her of sending threatening and offensive messages to her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, in violation of a projection order.
Lisa Chase, 42, was arrested four times by Colorado Springs police, beginning in November 2022. Shocked, she spent a year complained to prosecutors, adamant she had no part in sending hundreds of the texts each day, which were sent using the app, TextNow.
Chase spent four nights in jail and faced a prison sentence on felony charges of stalking, and additional misdemeanor charges of harassment and violations of protection orders.
“Every single time this is happening, that I’m getting arrested, they never asked me for my story,” Chase said. “It was just arrest, arrest, arrest all the time on screenshots.”
It wasn’t until the mother hired a PI, John San Agustin, a former El Paso County Sheriff’s Office commander, that the truth started to come out.
Police relied on cellphone screenshots to make their case against Chase, but according to San Agustin, they never examined Chase’s phone.
San Agustin said that when he pulled data from Chase’s electronic devices, it was clear she had not sent the messages.
“It is my opinion that the Colorado Springs Police Department failed miserably while investigating the multiple allegations against Ms. Chase,” San Agustin wrote in a report.
“The complete lack of an investigation and absence of any physical or digital evidence leaves no basis for the charges against Ms. Chase,” he wrote. “Seizing Ms. Chase’s mobile devices and serving a search warrant on TextNow would have revealed that Ms. Chase did not send the alleged text messages.”
San Agustin was able to figure out the truth when he – not the police – got a subpoena to get into Canadian-based TextNow’s computers, which showed that a registering email address from a download of the app was linked to Kristin Eaton, 36, girlfriend of Chase’s old boyfriend.
Then, last December, Eaton was charged for an alleged plot to frame Chase, using TextNow.
Eaton surrendered to authorities to face two felony charges of attempting to influence public servants, one felony charge of criminal impersonation and two misdemeanor charges for creating false emergencies. She posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody pending her trial.
The case against Chase has now been dismissed but she is still recovering from the trauma of what she sees as a wrongful, misguided and reckless prosecution.
“How can I celebrate when I already knew I was innocent from the get-go? I’ve spent tons of money on my lawyers and a private investigator and even my therapist?” Chase asked. “I will not feel relief from this until there’s some justice.”
Chase amassed more than $60,000 in attorney fees and private investigative fees before she was able to convince prosecutors to dismiss her criminal charges.
The Colorado Springs Police Department have defended their handling of the case and say they sympathize with anyone whose life was affected.
