A Philadelphia area district
attorney has fired a detective who allegedly filed baseless charges against a
contractor, ruining his business.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
reports that the Montgomery County district attorney fired detective Mary
Anders this week. The move came as
prosecutors reached a $1.6 million settlement with Walter Logan, a
Radnor Township man who authorities now say was falsely charged with stealing
from a Jenkintown church.
Logan says the theft charges
all but destroyed reputation of his business. Logan's attorney says Anders
never even interviewed him, instead building the case using information
provided by the church.
A message left at a number
listed for Mary Anders was not immediately returned.
Officials say Logan, a Radnor
building contractor, was wrongly accused of ripping off Salem Baptist Church of
Jenkintown. Last Tuesday he received an apology and $1.6 million as part of a
lawsuit settlement.
The lawsuit states that Montgomery
County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman brought unfounded theft charges
against Logan.
Ferman apologized to Logan,
whose alleged crimes she once called "particularly despicable" and
"really very low."
The church had hired Logan's
contracting company to build additions to its campus back in 2003. Several
years later, that same church accused Logan of stealing from them.
"When Mr. Logan insisted
on being paid he got a letter," said Mark Tanner, Logan's attorney.
"The letter said, 'we are throwing you off this job.'"
The District Attorney's Office
began to investigate Logan's work. In 2009, he was arrested and charged with
swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church.
"He was shocked,"
Tanner said. "He didn't do anything wrong."
An independent arbitrator later
determined that it was the church who bilked Logan out of payment for his work.
According to the arbitrator, the church actually owed Logan more than $300,000
in overdue fees and damages.
