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 imposed a $5,000 fine. Howell received six months of probation and a $2,500 fine. Both were also required to pay $25 in mandatory special assessment fees. Lopez pleaded guilty to unauthorized disposal of government records valued at less than $1,000, while Howell pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the same offense. These are misdemeanor charges under federal law.
The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana after the Northern District of Texas recused itself.
Court records show that Howell represented a client involved in a federal healthcare fraud investigation led by Lopez between September 2021 and December 2022. Three individuals were charged in Dallas federal court during this period, but not Howell’s client.
In April 2023, two defendants accused Howell of violating a joint defense agreement and filed a sealed motion requesting all communications between Howell and Lopez, including text messages. U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn granted this request 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 and later provided incomplete screenshots of their conversations. On April 14, 2023, Lopez informed Howell about allegations concerning privileged material sharing and suggested they stop communicating.
After being served with the motion on April 20, 2023, Howell deleted texts between himself and Lopez from his phone; however, these messages were recovered from his cloud account by a forensic consultant. Before production of evidence from his law firm’s forensic image of the account, Howell saw that deleted texts remained present and allowed them to be produced.
On May 10, 2023, investigators found that many messages between Howell and Lopez had been marked “deleted” on April 20—the day Howell was served with the motion to compel discovery. The following day, Lopez appeared with legal counsel who confirmed he had also deleted messages.
United States Attorney Courcelle commended the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General in Dallas for its investigation work: “U.S. Attorney Courcelle praised the work of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General, Dallas Office which handled this investigation.” Assistant United States Attorneys Matthew R. Payne (Financial Crimes Unit) and Megan R. Roberts (Appellate Unit) managed the prosecution.
