Opinion and Analysis
HONESDALE, WAYNE COUNTY — In late July, Phil Lather posted a video to Facebook that has been viewed more than 707,000 times. He is standing in his bar at the Moonshadow Inn and Resort in Beach Lake, a historic hotel and restaurant he calls “absolutely beautiful.” He is holding a copy of the Constitution. He brought it to the courthouse once. He never got to use it. He is not yelling in the video. He is explaining, and he keeps losing his place and coming back to the same sentence.
“I’ve never even been inside of a courtroom,” he says. “Not even two seconds.”
He says he hasn’t had a parking ticket in 25 years. He says he was in pursuit of the American dream. He lost his home in Honesdale to a man from Miami without ever appearing before a judge, and he is now in Chapter 13 bankruptcy to keep the sheriff from taking what is left. He tells the sheriff he loves him. He says the sheriff is a good person. Then he says the day the sheriff comes for his things is the day he dies.
“Now I wait to die,” Lather says. “Let’s do this.”
Over the past year, this outlet has documented how the Wayne County courthouse operates. Two judges and one district attorney share a building with a bar association whose officers rotate between the bench, the prosecutor’s office, and private practice. The same names appear in different chairs.
In every case we have reported, the conflict of interest was on the record. Kaitlin White. Dr. John Stevens. Joseph Cordaro. Someone admitted it, wrote it down, or said it out loud.
Phil Lather’s case has no such moment. Nobody admitted anything. Nobody left notes. Every step, taken alone, is procedurally defensible.
That is because Phil Lather never got a hearing. He never got discovery. He never got the chance that produced the confessions in every other case. And the people who made sure of that are the same people this outlet has been writing about.
What follows is what the record shows. Whether it adds up to coincidence is for the reader to decide.
The Deal
“Gentleman flew up from Florida, looked at my home in Honesdale, and said, ‘I’ll take that deal.’ He went back to Florida,” Lather says.
The gentleman was David Hester of 420 NE 115 Street, Miami, a house Zillow currently values at over a million dollars. On November 17, 2018, Hester flew roughly 1,200 miles to Honesdale, a town of about 4,000 people, to sign a rent-to-own contract on a house he found on Facebook. He had no ties to the area. He never planned to live there.
The sale price was $79,000. Zillow currently values 249 Terrace Street at $238,000. Lather says it was worth $200,000 at the time, and says he priced it low on purpose: a previous tenant had left him with tens of thousands of dollars in damage across two of his properties, and he wanted out.
A man with a million-dollar home could have obtained a conventional mortgage, a home equity loan, or a personal loan for $79,000 without difficulty. Instead he chose the one structure that does not require a title company, does not require a lender’s due diligence, and gives the buyer a specific performance claim if the seller tries to back out.
Hester signed the papers and flew home. His daughter Rachel and James Stalter, the father of her children, moved in. Hester never spent a night at the property. From that day forward, every legal notice in the case was served on Stalter at the address.
Context: Hester’s attorney was Kyle Krajkovich of Spall Rydzewski Anderson Lalley & Tunis. Krajkovich earned his law degree at Barry University in Florida, whose main campus sits in Miami Shores, about seven miles from Hester’s address. He joined the Hawley firm in 2017, one year before the deal. His practice specialty is real estate closings and quiet title actions.
The Occupation
Within a month, the sewer bill went unpaid. Within the year, they were building without permits. Photos from the property show floor joists stripped out and exposed concrete inside. A stone retaining wall going up in the yard.
Lather filed a formal property maintenance complaint with the Borough of Honesdale on October 11, 2019. In the space asking what happened when he tried to speak with the tenants, he wrote:
“They laugh at me and said they would beat me up so I called the cops.”
According to Lather’s breach notes, one of the occupants pulled a handgun on him. His attorney later documented it in a formal letter to opposing counsel.
“Mr. Stalter menaced my client with a firearm.”
A security camera photograph shows a man standing at the front door, appearing to hold a firearm at his side.
“This is what the guy did. He pulled a handgun on me,” Lather says. “See the gun?”
Context: Hester did not put just anyone in that house. In Miami-Dade County in 2015, James Stalter was convicted of domestic violence battery against Rachel Hester and placed under a stay-away order. He violated probation. In Broward County in 2014, he pleaded no contest to four felony counts of dealing in stolen property and filing false pawn information. He violated that probation as well and was sent to Florida state prison in 2016. In May 2026, Wayne County charged him with corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault. That case is pending.
When Lather went to the courthouse with his attorney to swear out a private criminal complaint against Stalter, Magisterial Judge Linus H. Myers refused to process it without the District Attorney’s direct approval. That approval never came. No charges were filed. The District Attorney’s office is where Brendan Ellis works. Whether it is true or not, this outlet cannot confirm, but Stalter has stated in writing that Brendan Ellis is his attorney.
John Martin
Lather stopped accepting Hester’s payments on October 1, 2019. On October 16, he retained attorney John J. Martin and paid a $1,000 retainer.
Five months later, Martin had filed nothing.
Lather fired him by certified mail in March 2020, demanded the retainer back, and threatened a Disciplinary Board complaint. Martin refunded the money. Both letters confirm the timeline.
Context: John J. Martin is the president of the Wayne County Bar Association. President Judge Janine Edwards began her legal career at his firm. His son sits as a Legal Journal officer alongside Jessica Ellis, Brendan Ellis’s wife.
Those five months mattered. In October 2019, Lather had documented breaches, a gun threat reported to police, and a borough complaint on file. By March 2020, COVID had closed the courts. By the time his next attorney could act, Hester’s side had a year to prepare a counterclaim.
The Hearing
Lather retained Alan Brian Jones on August 12, 2020, for $2,900. The invoice subject line reads: “Lather vs Hester: breach of real property installment contract; ejectment action; and quiet title action.”
In late May or early June 2021, Jones suffered two ischemic strokes. He confirmed this in writing to the Disciplinary Board.
On June 3, 2021, Krajkovich, Hester’s own attorney, filed a Motion for Continuance. It said: “Plaintiff’s counsel recently suffered a medical emergency and will not be ready for trial.”
The other side was asking the court to wait.
On June 17, 2021, President Judge Janine Edwards denied the continuance.
On June 22, 2021, at 9:04 in the morning, she held the hearing. The transcript is on the record:
“Seeing no Plaintiff here and no contact from the Plaintiff as to why he may not be appearing today, this is a civil matter filed by them with a Complaint. Plaintiff’s action against the Defendant for breach of an installment land purchase agreement, at this time I dismiss the Complaint.”
There had been contact. Nineteen days earlier, Krajkovich had put the medical emergency in the court file. Edwards had denied that motion herself, five days before the hearing.
She knew.
Krajkovich then proceeded on Hester’s counterclaim. Hester was sworn in. Specific performance was awarded. Every one of Hester’s damage claims was denied. Only the property transfer was granted.
Phil Lather was not in the room. He didn’t know the hearing had happened until his sister, who worked at the courthouse, called him.
“The judge did not continue it,” she told him, according to Lather. “She had the hearing without you and she awarded specific performance and gave them your house.”
Lather was ordered to sign the deed over. When he refused, he was found in contempt. On October 13, 2022, he signed 249 Terrace Street over to David Hester. Sign, or go to jail.
Context: Janine Edwards. A federal civil rights complaint alleging she used her position to steer a neighboring county’s prosecution toward her niece survived dismissal. The detective investigating her role tried to interview her and she refused. The county’s insurer paid $1.1 million. She presided over the Cordaro sentencing without recusal, a case that originated from a complaint filed by a colleague whose father’s legal bills the DA allegedly used criminal charges to collect.
The Second Lawsuit
The house was gone. It should have ended there.
On September 18, 2023, Hester sued again. The theory required the court to accept that Lather had encumbered property Hester was owed free and clear.
The encumbrance was a Home Equity Line of Credit from Honesdale National Bank. It was originated on August 3, 2015. The rent-to-own contract was signed November 17, 2018. The lien predated the contract by three years and three months. Any title search would have found it in seconds.
Lather was served September 19. He did not file an answer. On October 23, 2023, a default judgment was entered for $27,633.54. Lather calls it $30,000 in the video; he is off by about $2,400, but the judgment is real.
No hearing was held. No evidence was tested.
The Execution
Ellis Law Group entered the case to collect.
On November 14, 2024, Brendan Ellis filed a Praecipe for Writ of Execution, listing $5,500 in attorney fees on top of the judgment. The sheriff was directed to seize Lather’s property. Lather filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy in March 2025 and the writ was stayed. Ellis then filed a claim in the bankruptcy itemizing another $2,500. That is $8,000 in fees on a $27,633 default judgment.
Ellis Law Group publicly advertises civil judgment execution as one of its services.
Context: Brendan Ellis is a sitting Assistant District Attorney. When supporters defended him as part-time, this outlet pulled six years of county payroll records. He has been classified full-time since December 2024, one month after he filed the writ against Lather. He uses the same phone number and private email server for DA business and his private practice. His firm’s Church Street address has appeared on official criminal case transcripts.
There is no wall between the two roles. When Ellis contacts a detective, a clerk, or a magistrate on behalf of a private client, those people have no way to distinguish the call from an official one. The number is the same. The email is the same. The man is the same.
Ellis prosecuted criminal cases before his former law partner Judge Meagher for four and a half years before disclosing the conflict. He privately represented County Coroner Edward Howell while prosecuting cases that depend on coroner findings. The county commissioners gave him an award for never turning down a case.
The Petitions
In April 2026, Lather filed pro se petitions to strike both judgments as void. He argued that a hearing held while his attorney was hospitalized, after the opposing side itself put the emergency on the record, was a denial of due process.
On May 1, 2026, Judge Matthew Meagher denied them. The orders say the petitions were untimely and that Lather had already signed the title over. Ellis Law Group is listed on the CC line.
Context: Matthew Meagher founded the firm that became Ellis Law Group. Ellis was his law partner. When Meagher took the bench, Ellis took over the practice.
Where It Stands
Lather is paying $816 a month into a Chapter 13 plan. He was ordered to sell an LLC property for $47,526.74 by June 30, 2026. He has filed complaints with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the Pennsylvania Attorney General, and what appears to be the Judicial Conduct Board. None has produced a public result.
From the contract in 2018 to the video in 2026, Phil Lather has never appeared in a Wayne County courtroom for a hearing on the merits of his case.
Legal Blackmail
What happened to Phil Lather is not new. It fits a category of real estate fraud that federal and state authorities have documented for years.
The Florida Bar Journal published an article titled “Specific Performance of Real Estate Contracts: Legal Blackmail.” It described how filing a suit for specific performance can tie up a property for years regardless of the underlying merits, because it becomes virtually impossible to obtain title insurance while such a suit is pending. That is the exact legal mechanism used to freeze Lather out of his own house.
The FBI has published warnings about real estate fraud schemes in which criminals target properties they do not own, use family members and shell entities as intermediaries, and exploit legal processes to acquire title. The Bureau’s Newark field office has said the schemes are increasingly targeting rental properties and out-of-town owners.
In the real estate industry, the profile of a predatory rent-to-own investor is well documented: an out-of-state buyer who approaches the seller unsolicited, offers a contract price disconnected from market value, has no intention of occupying the property, uses proxies to take possession, stops payments early, and uses the courts to force outcomes the market would not give them.
Every one of those markers is present in what happened to Lather.
We do not know Hester’s intent when he signed the contract. Intent is what discovery is for, and no discovery has ever been permitted. But the pattern is documented enough that the FBI writes bulletins about it and the Florida Bar publishes law review articles about the exact legal weapon used.
The Quiet Part
In May 2026, Pennsylvania State Police charged James Stalter with corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault. Troopers say he directed a child to assault someone, and the child did it. The office prosecuting him is the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office, the same office whose approval Lather’s criminal complaint against Stalter needed in 2020 and never got.
One month after the charges were filed, Stalter sent an unsolicited email to this outlet threatening to sue over unrelated reporting. He volunteered the name of his lawyer.
“I just spoke to my lawyer, Brandon Ellis.”
Within hours of being asked when he retained Ellis and whether Ellis also represented his father-in-law, Stalter wrote back asking this outlet to discard the message and not contact him, his family, or his attorney. Ellis has never entered an appearance on Stalter’s docket. In every prior case on record, in Florida and in Pike County, Stalter was represented by a public defender.
Magisterial District Judge Jessica Ellis, Brendan Ellis’s wife, approved the criminal complaint against Stalter. She took his traffic case and accepted his guilty plea. Before she took the bench, she signed the Writ of Execution in the Hester case as counsel for Ellis Law Group, directing the Wayne County Sheriff to levy on and sell Phil Lather’s property.
On September 9, this outlet published the Stalter story. Under the Facebook post, a profile under the name James Allen replied to a commenter who called Stalter “another upstanding Honesdale citizen”:
“ummmmm not happen rn still taking Phil lather for everything and once we stop that criminal and drain that swamp”
Phil Lather has spent four years asking why. The man who pulled the gun on him just answered.
A Question Worth Asking
Opinion & Analysis
Every step in this case is defensible on its own. A lawyer was slow. A magistrate wanted DA approval. A judge denied a continuance. A default was entered. A writ was executed. A petition was untimely.
What is not defensible is who was standing at each step. The bar association president. The judge who trained at his firm. The ADA’s office. The ADA’s firm. The ADA’s wife. The ADA’s former partner. And now, by his own account, the ADA himself as counsel to the man who pulled the gun.
Phil Lather was not a party to a legal dispute. He was the object of one.
The Pocono Review is an independent investigative news outlet covering Monroe, Wayne, Pike, Carbon, Lackawanna, and Luzerne counties. Court records referenced in this article are publicly available through the Wayne County Prothonotary and the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System portal. Florida records are from the Miami-Dade and Broward County Clerks of Court. Bankruptcy records are from Case 5:25-BK-00603-MJC in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
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