HOUSTON — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and state prosecutors reached a deal to resolve his 9-year-old securities fraud charges, attorneys announced at a Harris County state District Court hearing Tuesday morning.
The 18-month pretrial intervention agreement will allow Paxton to walk away from the yearslong case with no charges if he meets the deal’s requirements, which include serving 100 hours of community service in Collin County, enrolling in 15 hours of legal ethics training and paying $271,000 in total restitution to investors who put money in a Dallas-area tech startup based on Paxton’s solicitations, according to the terms made public Tuesday morning.
“I am grateful to reach this agreement, to get this matter behind me, so I can get back to the work representing the State of Texas,” Paxton said in a statement.
“The State approached us, and General Paxton is happy to agree to the terms of the dismissal,” said Dan Cogdell, Paxton’s attorney. “The agreement allows him to get back to representing the citizens of the State of Texas. But let me be clear, at no time was he going to enter any plea bargain agreement or admit to conduct that simply did not occur. There is no admission of any wrongdoing on Ken’s part in the agreement because there was no wrongdoing on his part.”
The charges — three felonies handed up by a Collin County grand jury in 2015 — stem from allegations that Paxton sought the investments without disclosing that the company, Servergy, was paying him $100,000 in company stock for each referral.
The case took nine years to resolve because “this case was a perfect storm of everything that could have derailed and delayed a prosecution,” Wice said in a news conference Tuesday morning, citing Hurricane Harvey’s destruction in Houston causing the courthouse to close in 2017 and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
