SANDUSKY — Attorney Peter Pattakos has taken on the defense of Ashli Ford in her pending trial on forgery and mortgage fraud charges. But before he was her advocate, he was one of her sharpest critics.
In 2023, when representing family members of Amanda Dean — a woman who disappeared in 2017 whose alleged killer is set to go on trial next year — Pattakos sent Ford a blistering cease-and-desist letter. He accused her of exploiting Dean’s case to attract attention, lying about Dean’s relatives and recklessly spreading falsehoods.
“Not only have your statements about this matter been sensationalized, salacious and apparently entirely unhelpful to any real progress in this investigation, you have repeatedly, recklessly and intentionally published extremely damaging falsehoods about our clients,” Pattakos wrote in the May 12, 2023 letter.
He warned Ford in writing: “It is well-established under Ohio law that a speaker may not escape legal consequences by ‘couching defamatory statements in terms of opinion,’ where those statements imply a false assertion of fact.”
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