Former federal prosecutor Carlos A. Lopez and Dallas criminal defense attorney Barrett R. Howell were sentenced on February 18, 2026, for deleting text messages that had been ordered to be produced by a United States District Judge. The announcement was made by United States Attorney David I. Courcelle.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey L. Cureton of the Northern District of Texas sentenced Lopez to one year of probation and a $5,000 fine, while Howell received six months of probation and a $2,500 fine. Both were also ordered to pay $25 mandatory special assessment fees. Lopez pleaded guilty to unauthorized disposal of government records valued at less than $1,000 under 18 U.S.C. § 641, and Howell pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the same offense under 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 2. These are misdemeanor offenses due to the value of the records being under $1,000.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas recused itself from this case, leading the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana to be appointed as special prosecutors.
Court documents show that Howell represented a client in a federal healthcare fraud investigation led by Lopez as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice. Between September 2021 and December 2022, three individuals were charged with healthcare fraud in Dallas federal court; Howell’s client was not among those charged.
In April 2023, two defendants accused Howell of violating a joint defense agreement and filed a sealed motion requesting an evidentiary hearing about whether protected information had been shared with Lopez. U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn granted their request for all communications between Howell and Lopez and scheduled an evidentiary hearing for May 15, 2023.
According to plea documents, after learning about the motion to compel discovery, Lopez deleted text messages with Howell from his government-issued phone but later provided only partial screenshots of these messages. On April 14, 2023, during a conference meeting with Howell, Lopez informed him about allegations regarding privileged material sharing and suggested they cease communication; Howell agreed.
After being served with the motion on April 20, 2023, Howell deleted texts between himself and Lopez from his phone; however, these texts were recovered by a forensic consultant through his cloud account backup before production in court proceedings. Prior to submitting evidence from his law firm’s forensic image of his cloud account—which still contained the deleted texts—Howell allowed their production despite having attempted deletion.
On May 10, 2023, authorities learned that many texts between Howell and Lopez had been marked “deleted” on April 20—the day Howell was served with the motion—after reviewing data extracted from Howell’s cloud account image. The following day, Lopez appeared with personal legal counsel who confirmed he too had deleted text messages.
United States Attorney Courcelle stated: "I want to thank our partners at the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General – Dallas Office for their excellent work investigating this matter." He added: "Assistant United States Attorneys Matthew R. Payne (Financial Crimes Unit) and Megan R. Roberts (Appellate Unit) handled this prosecution."
