Vancouver defense attorney Josephine Townsend charged with two counts of forgery

A Vancouver defense attorney is facing forgery charges for allegedly altering documents related to a civil protection order against her client.

Josephine Townsend, 64, is charged with two counts of forgery in Clark County Superior Court. An assistant attorney general filed the charges Tuesday at the request of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, court records show.

A date has not yet been set for Townsend to appear in court.

According to court records, Travon Santiago, 26, was arrested in December 2023 on suspicion of first-degree assault. A judge ordered a criminal protection order, as well as GPS monitoring, prohibiting Santiago from coming within 1,000 feet of the victim, Joseph Prendergast.

Around that time, Prendergast’s partner, Angela Foss, filed for a civil protection order against Santiago. The civil protection order was issued in January and restricted Santiago from coming within 5,000 feet of her, according to court records.

On April 25, Superior Court Judge Suzan Clark issued an order to change the distance restriction in the criminal protection order to 500 feet. Clark County sheriff’s deputies learned that was because Santiago’s apartment was roughly 1,000 feet from Prendergast’s home. But, they said the civil protection order prohibiting Santiago from coming within 5,000 feet of Foss was never changed, court records state.

On July 17, deputies responded to a 911 call from Foss reporting a violation of the civil protection order. When deputies accessed the online GPS monitoring system, they saw Santiago was at his apartment, which was in violation of the 5,000-feet restriction, court records state.

When deputies went to the apartment, Santiago’s girlfriend presented them with a document that claimed the protection order had been modified. But deputies said the case number was for the criminal case, not the civil case they were there to enforce, according to court records. Deputies said Santiago’s girlfriend was on the phone with someone they learned to be Townsend, Santiago’s attorney.

The deputies left the apartment.

Santiago’s girlfriend later called the sheriff’s office. She told a sergeant that Townsend had sent her an order showing the protection order had been modified. She forwarded the order to the sergeant, which deputies noted was dated April 25 and now had the correct case number for the civil protection order. They said it also had Judge Clark’s electronic signature — with the same time stamp, down to the second, as the modified criminal protection order — along with the clerk’s office’s e-filing stamp, according to court records.

The sheriff’s office’s records unit was unable to find any record of the order Santiago’s girlfriend sent to the sergeant. The county clerk’s office was also unable to find any record of that order, but it did find in the civil case file a motion to modify the protection order dated July 18, the day after deputies went to Santiago’s apartment, court records state.

The sergeant said he began to suspect the order had been forged, and he said he found inconsistencies in the markings on the document, according to court records.

Investigators followed up with Santiago’s girlfriend, who said Townsend assured the couple the protection order had been modified. She said she was frustrated with Townsend because it took hours for Townsend to send her the order, according to court records.

Deputies also showed Santiago’s girlfriend the motion filed July 18 to modify the civil protection order with narratives requesting the change and with Santiago’s signature. Santiago told deputies he did not write the narratives and that it wasn’t his signature. He said his name was misspelled in the signature, court records state.

Deputies met with Clark, who said she had never seen the order Santiago’s girlfriend provided, according to court records, and the judge said she never signed it.

Investigators reviewed the recording of the court hearing in which Clark modified the distance provision in the criminal protection order. Clark noted the greater distance provision in the civil protection order and said Santiago would need to file a motion in that case for a judge to reconsider the distance, court records state.

In an email to investigators, Townsend said Santiago and his girlfriend provided documents to her office to be scanned. She said her office did not create the documents and that it advised the couple some of the documents were not in the court file. She said her office told the couple they would need to go to civil court for the order they were seeking and that the narratives were e-signed by Santiago, court records state.

Townsend also later told deputies Santiago did not hire her to represent him in the civil case. She was only aware of the criminal protection order, she said, until the couple called her and insisted there was another order in the documents they asked her to scan, according to court records.

She said she told the couple the civil order was not in the online court record, and she didn’t think the order they wanted scanned was correct, court records state. Still, she scanned the document and emailed it to them, she said, despite thinking something was not right.

“We have a lot of cases and are buried with work,” she wrote to deputies, according to court records.

The next day, she filed the document for Santiago, she said, but she did not request a hearing because he still hadn’t hired her. She said she confronted Santiago about whether he was lying to deputies, but that she couldn’t tell deputies anything more because of confidentiality rules, court records state.

Investigators reviewed Townsend’s activity in the online court portal. They said she accessed both the criminal and civil cases while deputies were at Santiago’s apartment July 17 and emailed the document to Santiago’s girlfriend about 15 minutes after deputies left, court records state.

When deputies followed up with Santiago and his girlfriend, they said they had struggled to get in touch with Townsend for months. They also let deputies look at their text messages with Townsend dating back to April, in which she promised to set a hearing for Santiago’s civil case, according to court records.

Townsend has since withdrawn from Santiago’s cases, citing professional rules around confidentiality, court records show.