Frank Parlato
The email arrived at 10:51 a.m. on Sunday, July 13.
Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon opened it in his office at 130 Stuyvesant Place. It had been sent to his official government email address.
The email was not personally addressed to him. It was a free newsletter published by Richard Luthmann and sent to 33,000 subscribers.
It carried a guest editorial by Dr. Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist in New York. It criticized a New Jersey Superior Court judge and called for her impeachment. Luthmann wrote a brief introduction. The newsletter did not mention McMahon.
The next day, McMahon called the police to his office. He filed a criminal complaint with the NYPD’s 120th Precinct. He accused Luthmann of Criminal Contempt in the First Degree, a Class E felony carrying up to four years in prison.
McMahon said the email violated an order of protection issued by New York State Supreme Court Justice Marina Cora Mundy, which, according to the complaint, remains in effect through October 26, 2028. The order barred Luthmann from having any contact with McMahon. The complaint alleged no threat. It alleged no harassment beyond the receipt of the email newsletter.
In the NYPD complaint, there is a small box. It asks whether the suspect and the complainant are strangers.
The box is marked Yes.
On the same form, McMahon was asked if he feared for his safety or his life. He answered yes.
A History Between Them
Ten years earlier, in 2015, when McMahon first ran for district attorney, Luthmann became known to McMahon when he backed his opponent. Luthmann, then an attorney and political strategist, accused McMahon of filing fraudulent designating petitions—particularly signatures of voters who were dead. The local press picked it up.
Luthmann also created a Facebook page that mimicked the appearance of McMahon’s campaign page and referred to McMahon as “Smilin’ Jack.” Luthmann labeled McMahon’s allies as the “Irish Mafia.” The page provided a link to McMahon’s real campaign website and announced that it was a parody.
McMahon won the election.
Power Consolidated
With his election, McMahon and his wife, Judith McMahon, held powerful positions in the county’s criminal justice system. Judith was the chief administrative judge. She assigned judges for cases, including those her husband’s office would try.
In 2017, Judge McMahon created a special narcotics calendar known as Part N. It was presented as intending to streamline drug cases and expedite the issuance of warrants.
The arrangement collapsed following Luthmann’s disclosure to the media of a secret recording of internal conversations between a court clerk, Judge McMahon, and other individuals. The recording revealed that Judge McMahon had created the special narcotics division to route cases to a pro-prosecution judge, Charles Troia, to help her husband, District Attorney McMahon, win questionable cases.
The recording prompted the state judiciary committee to remove Judge McMahon from her administrative authority. She was removed from Staten Island and reassigned to Manhattan. The demotion had lasting consequences. Her salary was reduced by approximately $50,000 a year, and the reduction would follow her into retirement. New York judicial pensions are calculated from the highest earning years. The administrative supplement she lost would reduce her pension by tens of thousands of dollars annually for the rest of her life.
McMahon Brings Charges
DA McMahon brought criminal charges against Luthmann arising from the satirical Facebook page. Because McMahon was the alleged victim, a special prosecutor was appointed. An indictment followed.
By then, Luthmann had been charged federally in an unrelated fraud case. Facing more serious federal charges, he accepted a plea agreement in the parody Facebook case and was sentenced to serve concurrently with his federal sentence.
Life gradually returned to normal for the McMahons. Political stability returned in the long-established manner in Staten Island. Elections became unnecessary for the McMahons. Party leaders struck quiet agreements. Republicans declined to challenge the McMahons.
Michael McMahon was reelected as district attorney, facing no opponent. He earned $212,000 a year as district attorney. At the same time, as a person over 65, he elected to receive his public pension of approximately $130,000 annually—despite continuing to work full-time. He was, in the system’s terminology, simultaneously retired and active.
His wife, Judith McMahon, also ran unopposed. She earned $210,900 as a New York State Supreme Court justice. She also turned 65, collected a pension exceeding $120,000 a year. (The loss of her administrative position reduced her pension. Luthmann cost her more than $25,000 per year for the rest of her life.)
Still, the McMahons were not impoverished. Together, their combined income—two salaries and two pensions—was approximately $676,000 annually, all derived from public funds. On Staten Island, where the median household income hovered near $100,000, the McMahons earned nearly seven times the median household income of the families they governed.
Luthmann Leaves and Returns
Luthmann, on the other hand, served a four-year federal sentence and moved to Florida. He was also disbarred.
In Florida, Luthmann reinvented himself as a journalist on Substack, and, with the platform’s writers’ promotional support systems, he published an increasingly popular newsletter. He focused on a variety of topics, including questions about his own cases. This year, he began seeking certain missing records in an effort to vacate his conviction on his Facebook parody of the McMahon prosecution. He did not threaten anyone in the conventional sense. He wrote about it (among many other topics) and suggested that the McMahon’s were corrupt.
The Missing Record
Among Luthmann’s discoveries was that while he was serving a federal prison sentence, the State of New York accepted his plea in the Facebook parody case and that somewhere, somehow, the plea included a supplemental charge, added without a grand jury indictment, through a procedural device known as a Supplemental Criminal Information.
Luthmann had little recollection of this supplemental charge. He had never been arraigned for it. He then began asking a simple question. Where is the fingerprint card?
As he recalled it, he was never arrested on the supplemental charge. Never booked. Never fingerprinted. How could he be? He was in federal custody at Allenwood, in Pennsylvania, when the plea was entered.
If true, the prior conviction would not merely be flawed. It would be void.
Luthmann began pressing the issue through motions and requests. Then he asked to argue it in court. A hearing appeared on the docket. He was told it would be a remote hearing. He attempted to attend and was denied access.
Later that day, the docket reflected “decision reserved.”
By the next morning, the docket was gone.
Every motion. Every entry. Erased from public view. Yet his conviction remained.
Now Luthmann was back. And possibly on the trail of something.
Subscribed and Afraid
In July 2025, McMahon told police that Luthmann’s newsletter violated an order of protection. He said he feared for his life. He said Luthmann was a stranger.
Of course, McMahon knew Luthmann’s name. He knew his face. He knew their history. And, one thing more, the record shows he knew his Substack newsletter—because he had been reading it for months.
Substack records show that McMahon received the email for only one reason: McMahon had voluntarily subscribed to Luthmann’s newsletter.
Substack records indicate that after subscribing, McMahon (along with 33,000 others) received approximately 60 newsletters from Luthmann before filing his complaint. Substack records show (the platform tracks these things) that in the weeks leading up to July 13, McMahon opened more than two dozen of Luthmann’s newsletters and clicked on their links.
McMahon remained on the subscriber list. Then, as related above, on Sunday, July 13, another email arrived. The following day, he called the police to his office. He said he was afraid.
When a district attorney reports fear, the police respond. Luthmann’s name was entered into the NYPD system under an active I-Card.
Police Detective Lays Out the System
On July 21, Detective John Wilkinson picked up the phone. The call lasted less than three minutes. It was recorded. Wilkinson was speaking to Lawrence Almagno, an attorney for Luthmann. Wilkinson identified himself as the case detective. The complainant, he said, was the Staten Island district attorney.
“McMahon?” the attorney asked.
“Yes,” Wilkinson replied.
“With the victim who it is,” Wilkinson said, “I get whatever I want.”
“I ask for X, I get it. I ask for Z, I get it.”
The meaning was clear. X was a warrant. Z was a warrant. Judges, Wilkinson said, would sign whatever he brought them. He spoke as though judicial approval were merely a formality.
He described what would happen next.
If Luthmann did not voluntarily come to New York City, the police could seek a warrant. U.S. Marshals could take him into custody in Florida. He would be transported north, slowly, through jails. Shackled. Handcuffed. Moved step by step until he reached Staten Island.
All of this, Wilkinson said, could be avoided.
Luthmann could fly north on his own and surrender. He would be fingerprinted, booked, and arraigned. He’d likely get bail.
The charge was criminal contempt in the first degree. A felony. It arose from a single email sent to more than 33,000 recipients. The email concerned a New Jersey judge and contained no threats or reference to McMahon.
Wilkinson acknowledged that criminal contempt is not always charged as a felony.
“But we,” he said, “PD is gonna charge the felony.”
The warrant, he said, would be signed within the week.
It was July.
An Open Case
Instead of flying to New York to surrender, Luthmann went to the media, beginning with the Frank Report. The story spread quickly.
Five months have passed. No judge has signed an arrest warrant. It remains unclear whether any of the judges Detective Wilkinson described as available to sign such a warrant were asked to do so.
Luthmann also filed a grievance with the bar association. Recently, the Attorney Grievance Committee declined to examine the matter, writing through staff counsel Michael D’Ambrosio that the issues were “more appropriate for resolution by a court of law.”
It is not clear that a general newsletter, sent without personalization, threat, or direct address, to a man who subscribed to it, constitutes a violation of an order of protection under New York law. The statute requires proof that the defendant knowingly and intentionally disobeyed a clearly communicated order. Whether a mass-distributed email satisfies that standard has not been tested.
Michael McMahon stated under oath he was afraid. He said an email made him fear for his life. He said the sender was a stranger.
The email was sent to 33,000 people. It was written by someone else. It did not mention McMahon. He had subscribed voluntarily. He had received sixty similar newsletters without reporting fear.
Five months have passed. No judge has signed an arrest warrant. But the I-Card remains active in the NYPD system. If Richard Luthmann sets foot in New York City—or returns to his hometown of Staten Island—he can be arrested on sight. He will be fingerprinted. He will be booked. The missing fingerprint card from the supplemental charge might finally appear in the file.
No warrant was needed for that.
Fear, after all, is not always about what might happen next.
Sometimes it is about what might be uncovered from the past.
What do we really have? The presumption of regularity in our elected officials:
A district attorney who prosecutes violence, frightened by words. A newsletter sent to thousands, received by one as a threat. An order of protection violated by a subscription. A stranger who has been known for ten years.
In Staten Island, where justice is a family business, some questions are more dangerous than any answer.
The case remains open.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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