Evidence is mounting in court documents that an Orange County sheriff’s detective illegally listened to at least five recorded calls between a jail inmate and an attorney — including calls in which the officer was warned by the lawyer not to listen.
Recordings of the calls were included in a motion filed Wednesday, April 12, by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders in an unrelated drug case. Sanders is seeking the personnel records of newly promoted Sgt. Matthew LeFlore in that case.
Sheriff’s spokesperson Carrie Braun said the department is examining Sanders’ motion to determine how to proceed.
“The department takes any allegation of misconduct seriously,” Braun said. “We are reviewing the motion and are committed to investigating, if discovered, any instances of misconduct.”
The conversations were among the nearly 34,000 attorney-client calls that were inadvertently recorded by the sheriff’s telephone vendor, GTL, now known as ViaPath Technologies. The breach was reported in 2018.
LeFlore is accused by Sanders of listening to recordings made in 2017 of calls from Theo Lacy jail inmate Taylor Camu-Ferguson to attorney Jon Andersen. Sanders is using LeFlore’s conduct regarding the calls to persuade a judge to give him LeFlore’s personnel files for use in an unrelated case involving gun charges.
On the jail recordings, Andersen repeatedly warns that he is an attorney and that anyone eavesdropping is violating the law. In at least two of the recordings, Andersen and Camu-Ferguson mention LeFlore by name in invectives laced with expletives.
In the last call, Andersen warns, “Anyone attempts to listen to this, especially that 5 foot tall, deceitful, lying Orange County sheriff named LeFlore, we’ll seek prosecution, guaranteed. So don’t listen in.”
In court testimony, LeFlore said he did not remember the content of the calls, according to the motion.
“Andersen probably delivered one of the most pointed and unforgettable…
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