Karen Used a Fake Lawyer Letter to Threaten Neighbors — The Real Firm Sued Her for Fraud

 

Part 1 — Letterhead

The morning the letter arrived, the street was quiet enough to hear the ice maker dump its first tray. Birds had a lot to say about nothing. I was nursing a coffee on the porch when Bob, my across-the-street neighbor, shuffled out in socks and picked a cream envelope off his mat like it might hiss. The return address block was a tasteful slab of gravitas:

KEENE, BLAIR & MORROW, LLP
Counselors at Law
125 Federal Street, Boston, MA 02110

The paper stock was heavier than any mail that came to our cul-de-sac. The font was a serif I felt in my molars. Bob read the first line standing in the dew; his shoulders went from crooked to defensive in a heartbeat. He held it up like a specimen.

“You get one of these?” he called.

Mine was propped by the door. So was Meredith’s. So was the Wilsons’. The envelopes had marched down our block overnight with the smug discipline of a color guard.

We gathered in Meredith’s kitchen with our letters and her blueberry muffins. The letter opened with the sort of throat clearance that lets you know someone has paid by the hour for the privilege of being menacing. “Dear Resident,” it read. “This firm represents Ms. Karen Doucette concerning repeated acts of harassment, trespass, and interference with quiet enjoyment caused by your continuing practice of parking in front of Ms. Doucette’s residence and placing trash receptacles in violation of municipal code.”

I snorted. Quiet enjoyment. The phrase shouldn’t be allowed in a paragraph that also contained the words recycling bin. It went on: “Be advised that further violation will result in immediate legal action.” It cited “Section 72(b) of the Code of Neighborly Conduct.”

“Is that real?” Meredith asked.

“It’s real on Mars,” Bob said. He had an old litigator’s squint he’d acquired as a paralegal thirty years ago before he decided people had more fun becoming electricians. “We don’t have a Code of Neighborly Conduct. We barely have a HOA.”

The signature at the bottom was a swoop: Morgan L. Keene. There was a phone number and an email: [email protected].

There are two kinds of panic. The kind that makes you run, and the kind that makes you Google. We chose the second. The firm existed. Sleek website, real Boston address, alumni of schools that keep a lot of old mahogany around. Ms. Keene was a partner. Her bio photo showed a woman with a jawline you could use as a straightedge and eyes that had learned to keep clients from stapling their own thumbs to the table.

“Is this… real?” Meredith asked again, smaller.

Bob set his finger on the letter’s letterhead like he might feel for a pulse. “The letter smells like fennel,” he said at last.

“It smells like what?”

“Herbed stationery,” he said. “Office Depot linen. The firm probably uses watermarked Crane. And this line,” he tapped, “‘immediately seize your vehicle pursuant to the Law Enforcement Act of 2025’—that doesn’t exist. No firm that wants to be paid uses Latin for trash.”

We all looked at the return address. It matched the firm’s. The phone number did too.

“Call them,” Meredith said.

“I’ll call,” I said. “If it’s a crank, it comes from a burner. If it’s real, they will not be pleased a neighbor fight is wearing their suit.”

I dialed. A woman’s voice answered on the second ring. “Keene, Blair & Morrow. This is Jun.”

“This is strange,” I began. “We’re in a neighborhood outside Providence and received letters on your letterhead about a recycling bin violation—”

“Oh no,” she said. There was a weight to the words like rain. “Hold, please.”

There was a second voice, crisp and economical. “This is Morgan Keene.”

I explained. The names. The phrases. The line about 72(b). The citations to nowhere. There was a silence you could set a cup down on.

“We did not write these,” she said. “Who is the client named?”

“Ms. Karen Doucette,” I said.

“We do not represent Ms. Doucette,” she said. “We do not represent individual residents in HOA disputes. We do not send cease-and-desist letters about municipal bin placement. Please email me a PDF of what you received and a photo of the envelope. Immediately.”

We sent them while we were still on the call. We heard her breath once—the sound a litigator makes when she has seen a forgery so clumsy she wants to laugh and cry.

“Thank you,” she said. “Let me be clear: this is a criminal matter. Impersonating an attorney is illegal. Using our mark and mailing threats under our name implicates identity fraud. We will be in touch.”

“How did she—” Meredith began, and then stopped. We all knew the answer. Karen, our block’s resident windstorm in a tennis visor, had finally found something sturdier than a Facebook post to weaponize.

The next morning, a car pulled up out front. It was not a police cruiser. It was a black sedan with a Massachusetts plate and a bumper sticker too tasteful to be anything but money. A woman in a navy suit stepped out, heels that meant business but wouldn’t blister on courthouse marble. She walked up the Doucette’s path and rang the bell. When the door opened, Karen’s voice—and then her face—tilted toward indignation.

“Ms. Doucette?” the woman said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Morgan Keene,” she said, and proffered a card. “Let’s talk about your letters.”

 

Part 2 — Clause 72(b)

Our HOA is a suggestion printed on paper. It’s a social contract with a logo: a birds-on-a-wire silhouette and the words BIRCH HILL COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION in a font that tries very hard. We had bylaws about grass height and noise hours and snow shoveling that suffered the same fate as all the HOA bylaws I’ve ever met: everyone remembered them on days they were angry. We didn’t have fines. We had glares.

Karen joined the board and started writing minutes with a ruler. She believed in the power of a clipboard with an aggressive ponytail. She printed the bylaws on heavier paper and highlighted them like scripture. When a snowstorm hit last December, she put Post-Its on every mailbox: “REMINDER: SHOVEL YOUR SIDEWALK BY 9 A.M. IT’S THE LAW. — KAREN, HOA.” The state code doesn’t require that. We shovel because we’re neighbors.

The letters were something else. It was performance art turned weapon. The closing line quoting the Law Enforcement Act of 2025 would have been funny if it hadn’t been the reason Meredith’s youngest started crying because she thought “they” were going to “take the car.” We explained, but explanations don’t always sink past fear.

Karen wore a visor for war. She also wore entitlement like cheap perfume. We watched through curtains as she argued with the woman from the Boston firm. It began polite—arms folded, head tilt. It turned emphatic—hand slice, finger jab. There was a moment when her face did a thing I’d only seen when a dog realizes the mail carrier is not, in fact, down to play. Then the woman in navy slid a folder through the crack of the door. Karen’s mouth fell open in a small O. She tried to slam the door. A manicured hand in the jamb prevented it.

The next day, every door on the street got a different letter. This one was local. It had our HOA’s sparrow logo at the top and a signature by Paul Jenkins, President (a retired chemist who’d been coaxed unwillingly into the job by the promise of coffee and donuts). It read:

Dear Neighbors,

We have confirmed that a resident has distributed letters falsely representing a law firm. Please disregard any such communication. Our association has not authorized legal action regarding trash receptacles or parking in front of homes (which, as you know, is a public right-of-way).

Ms. Doucette has been instructed to cease all misrepresentation. We trust you will continue to be neighborly.

Sincerely,

Paul

Karen’s response appeared on the community Facebook group within the hour. It was a manifesto in twelve paragraphs titled “The Law Is On My Side.” It referenced “Clause 72(b) Unauthorized Lawn Infringement” and “Sec. 10.4 Improper Sidewalk Navigation.” It also referenced “federal statute 314 subsection unicorn” and warned of “escalation to higher authorities.”

“Unicorn,” Bob texted me, screenshot attached. “She’s literally citing unicorns.”

“Maybe she typed it with her forehead,” I replied.

By afternoon, the real firm posted a statement on their website and on a letter slid under every door, a delicately worded thrust:

To Whom It May Concern:

It has come to our attention that correspondence bearing our name and letterhead has been distributed to residents of Birch Hill Community Association. Keene, Blair & Morrow, LLP did not author, issue, or authorize these letters. The use of our mark and impersonation of our attorneys is under investigation. We take identity fraud seriously. Please direct any questions to Morgan L. Keene, Esq.

Respectfully,

Keene, Blair & Morrow, LLP

If the unicorn reference hadn’t made this ridiculous, the line “under investigation” made it real. The white sedan returned the next morning, this time with a man in a dark tie who carried a stack of documents that looked heavier than they were. He wore the expression of a person who has seen people talk themselves into handcuffs.

He knocked. He explained. He handed her papers. Our ring cameras heard everything they needed to.

“Identity fraud?” Karen squawked. “This is absurd. I was just… advocating.”

“Ma’am,” the man said. “Printing and mailing letters under a firm’s letterhead is not advocacy. It is forgery. It impersonates attorneys. It’s also trademark infringement. It is not a civil dispute with your neighbor. It is a crime.”

“Then I’ll see you in court,” she said, all the television she’d watched as a child rising in her. She had always wanted a gavel. She had purchased one from a toy store the day before and tested it on her dining table to her cat’s horror.

“You will,” he said, and handed her a complaint stamped by the Superior Court of Massachusetts: Keene, Blair & Morrow, LLP v. Doucette.

 

Part 3 — Discovery

You learn a lot about a stranger when you watch them under discovery. You learn what they write in emails when they think CC: is a shield. You learn what they Google at 2 a.m. (“can I be my own lawyer” and “lawyer letter template free”). You learn how many Office Depot receipts fit in a manila folder.

In our group chat, someone wrote, simply: “She’s live streaming.”

Karen had decided to become an internet court. She set up a ring light. She went live on Facebook from a living room redecorated as a war room: binoculars on the windowsill, a whiteboard ranking neighbors’ offenses in dry erase like crime. She wore a robe—black, polyester, zip. A gavel sat at hand. She began reading the “Law Enforcement Act of 2025” aloud in a voice that trembled with righteousness.

The comments filled fast. Our neighborhood. #MomsOfWarwick. Then the world. People posted unicorns. People posted Darth Vader with a gavel. People posted clips of legal dramas with the sound replaced by kittens meowing. People posted snatches of actual code with humor. A person with a public defender’s badge icon wrote, “Lady, don’t impersonate lawyers.”

She was a star for all the wrong reasons. The real firm was stonequiet. They weren’t playing online chess. They were building a case with the weight of paper. In the age of content we had forgotten what paper can do.

A week later, a hearing. We took the day off to go. You don’t get to watch the wheel turn very often in real time. Providence Superior Court’s courtroom five smelled like old wood and the ghost of thousands of apologies. Karen wore her robe. Real court frowns on costumes. The bailiff asked her to remove it. She argued. The judge’s face went soft, a professional’s compassion for someone drowning in their own hubris. “Ms. Doucette,” he said gently and then not, “take off the robe.”

The judge was the kind of man who had learned to hide his curiosity under his job. He’d seen everything at least once. The partners from Keene, Blair & Morrow looked like money’s cool aunt and uncle. Morgan took notes with a pen that probably had a story. She didn’t enter the ring. She stuck to the terms: false designation of origin under the Lanham Act; identity fraud under state statute; unauthorized practice of law; forgery.

Karen wanted to talk about trash cans. The judge wanted to talk about the difference between a world where we send letters on letterhead and a world where we don’t. He issued a temporary restraining order in fifteen minutes: enjoining her from using the firm’s name or any confusingly similar mark; ordering removal of all letters from social media; forbidding further communications claiming legal authority she did not have. He ordered expedited discovery. He ordered that Karen pay the firm’s fees to date. When she sputtered, he raised a hand. “Ma’am. The law is not your hobby.”

There’s an uglier part. Her response to the complaint included phrases she had learned on the internet: “sovereign citizen,” “admiralty law,” “my name in all caps means a corporation.” That answer earned a mix of embarrassment and pity. There is nothing satisfying about watching a neighbor break in a courtroom. It’s a citizen’s trauma caught on wood varnish.

Meanwhile, our HOA board finally found its spine. They called an “emergency meeting” which in HOA speak means “coffee and folding chairs in the clubhouse with a microphone that doesn’t work.” Paul, permanent cardigan, banged a pen on a saucer. “Order,” he said plaintively.

We amended the bylaws. We added:

No member may impersonate an attorney, firm, or governmental body.
No member may use the HOA’s logo, letterhead, or signage to commit or threaten unlawful acts.
All legal communications must originate from the board’s counsel.

We voted unanimously. We had never voted unanimously on anything. Someone proposed a Kindness Code. It passed. We wrote: “We will address each other as neighbors first.”

Karen didn’t attend. Her chair looked like an apology.

 

Part 4 — Trial

Trials aren’t like TV. They’re like anxiety with a soundtrack of paper. The courtroom was full of neighbors pretending to be interested in civic duty and actually wanting to see what justice looks like when someone does something you can’t do: threaten people with letterhead you bought at Office Depot.

Morgan opened with the blunt end. “Defendant stole our name to threaten her neighbors,” she said. “She used the tolls of law to intimidate without authority. The law has remedies for that because the system cannot function if every petty tyrant believes she can pretend to be a lawyer until someone calls her bluff.” She slid exhibits down the conveyor belt: our letters, Karen’s videos, screenshots of Clause 72(b) with unicorn emojis.

The defense—it pains me to write—argued theater. “Hyperbole,” he called it. “Neighborhood nonsense.”

“Hyperbole doesn’t carry a forged signature of an attorney,” Morgan said. “Nonsense doesn’t go in the mail.”

Judges are human. They get mad. Not often. When they do, it’s cold. This judge got cold. “Ms. Doucette,” he said, “you do not get to wrap yourself in the First Amendment to shield fraud. You don’t get to cry neighbor dispute when you have impersonated officers of the court. The law is a tool. It is not your stick.”

He awarded the firm statutory damages for infringement and treble damages for the cost of chasing her down. He awarded attorneys’ fees. He issued a permanent injunction. He referred the matter to the district attorney for review under identity fraud and forgery. He ordered community service with a legal aid clinic, which made me and Meredith both cry a little because it was cruel and merciful at once. It said: learn.

When it was over, Morgan walked out of the courtroom with a half-smile like the kind you give when you’re glad to have done the thing you said you would but your day could have been better spent. I caught up with her. “Thank you,” I said, because sometimes gratitude is a civic duty.

She shrugged. “I don’t like bullies,” she said. “Also, don’t ever cite unicorns in a complaint.”

“I’ll note that.”

She hesitated. “We developed a one-page ‘How to Read a Lawyer Letter’ guide during discovery,” she said, voice wry. “Half of our work now is convincing people to ignore bogus threats. If your HOA wants it, I’ll send it. Free. Consider it penance for every firm that ever wrote a scary letter it didn’t need to.”

We printed it on the HOA’s cheap paper and slid it under every door. It said: Red Flags. It said: Check the firm’s website. It said: Don’t panic. It said: Call us if it looks like ours. It made me feel like civilization might yet survive the internet.

 

Part 5 — Consequences

Karen didn’t go to jail. Most people don’t. She got probation and a fine and a sealed record she will never be allowed to brag about and that will ruin job interviews in ways she will not understand the fairness of. She did community service at the legal aid clinic. They put her at the copier. She learned what it feels like to collate other people’s misery. She learned how much work it is to help. She learned to stop talking for three hours a day.

She took down her live streams. She unfriended us all. She put blinds on the big picture window that had become her watchtower. The binoculars went away. The whiteboard disappeared. The gavel resurfaced in a yard sale where a small boy bought it for a dollar and started banging it on his porch while shouting, “Order! Order!” in a British accent because children are the best we’ve got.

On Halloween, she wore a cat costume that was too tight and handed out fun-size Snickers with a look that said she didn’t know how to talk to a line of children in dinosaur pajamas. “Happy Halloween,” she managed, too soft.

“Thanks, Ms. Karen,” Meredith’s youngest said, because children are mirrors and mercy.

She didn’t come to the next HOA meeting. Her lawn got long. Then it got short. She put a small sign in it: BE KIND. It was the same font as the letters she’d sent, only softer. I don’t know if she meant it like an apology. I chose to pretend she did.

The neighborhood changed. Not a lot. Enough. Bob installed a little mailbox next to his actual mailbox with a plaque that read: TRIBUNAL POST. He put in a small sign: “Citations go here. They will be recycled.” People slipped in notes anyway: “Nice pumpkins!” “Your dog is loud but adorable.” I planted marigolds.

In January, the HOA published a code we called the Civility Ordinance. We wrote it on one page, in English you didn’t have to bill by the hour to understand. It said: “We do not weaponize the law. We speak to each other first. We do not forge letterhead. We call the police for crimes, not for disagreements.” We put a number for the legal aid clinic at the bottom in smaller type. It felt like grace.

 

Part 6 — The Future State

A year later, social media had moved on to other Karens, other chaos. But in our neighborhood the ghosts of the letters lingered in a way that felt almost useful—as a reminder of what paper can do, and what we shouldn’t make it do.

The firm sent a holiday card. It had a photograph of downtown Boston in snow and a note:

To our friends at Birch Hill,

We are pleased our relationship began in farce but turned to function. Enclosed please find a laminated copy of “How to Read a Lawyer Letter” for your clubhouse.

Wishing you quiet enjoyment in the truest sense.

—KBM

The laminated card hung crooked on the corkboard between a flyer for piano lessons and a sign-up sheet for snow shoveling volunteers. It said the same thing Morgan had told me in that first phone call: Don’t panic. Call us. It also said: Law isn’t a stick. It’s a rulebook we agree to play by. If someone uses it to hit you, call a ref.

On a spring Saturday, Paul, the HOA president, stood next to a grill and flipped hotdogs like peace treaties. “You know,” he said, mustard on his cardigan, “I used to think bylaws were for golf carts and grass. Turns out they’re also for keeping people from becoming tyrants.”

“Everything is a franchise of civics,” Bob said.

“That’s on a T-shirt somewhere.”

“We should print it,” Meredith said. “On legal letterhead.”

We laughed. It felt good to laugh at the right thing.

Karen came to the picnic. She brought potato salad. It was good. She set it on the table and hovered like a guest at a party she hadn’t been invited to in her own mind. Meredith went over and asked about her cat. Bob told her he liked her Halloween sign. I nodded at her gavel, now in the hands of a six-year-old who was using it to flatten a dandelion. “He wants to be a judge,” I said.

“Tell him he has to go to law school,” Karen said, and smiled, a real one that sat in the corners of her mouth like a possibility.

 

Part 7 — Coda

A woman from three streets over stopped me a few weeks later. She had a baby balanced on a hip and a letter in her hand. “I… got this,” she said, eyes wide. The letterhead was from a debt collector trying to scare her into paying a bill she didn’t owe. The words were heavy and indifferent. The baby grabbed at the paper.

“Don’t panic,” I said. “Call legal aid. Call a firm that knows how to handle this. The letter is designed to scare you. That’s its only job. It’s less powerful than your phone’s delete key.”

She blinked. Relief leaked into her shoulders. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I thought—”

“People who write letters like this want you to think,” I said. “For five minutes. That’s all it takes to ruin a day.”

She went home. She called. The letter died the way a lot of bad letters die when they meet a better letter.

If you want a moral, here’s mine: paper is neutral. It can be a deed to the house you’ve bled for; it can be a letter that pretends comfort is law; it can be a laminated card in a clubhouse that says Don’t be a jerk. We get to choose which we make, and we get to choose what we do when someone chooses wrong.

A few months later, the mail carrier lingered on my porch, took off his cap and fanned his neck. “You folks had quite a winter,” he said.

“We had quite a lesson,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve seen worse,” he said. “I’ve seen better. But I don’t often see folks come out the other side with a laminated guide.”

“Small miracles,” I said.

He grinned, handed me a package from Boston heavy enough to be important. It was from Keene, Blair & Morrow. Inside was a book: Paper Shields: A Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Scary Letters, co-authored by Morgan and four other lawyers who had decided to make their pens useful beyond billing. They had sent a box for our HOA. A note inside read: “Because of a unicorn.”

Sometimes justice is a gavel. Sometimes it is a laminated card in a clubhouse next to a flyer for a bake sale. Sometimes it’s a neighbor knocking to ask you to translate an envelope. Sometimes it’s a woman in a navy suit driving an hour to tell another woman the law is not her hobby.

Most days it’s smaller and more satisfying than the internet makes it look. It’s Bob’s “Tribunal Post” filled with notes that say “Great azaleas!” It’s Meredith knocking on Karen’s door with a pie when Karen had gallbladder surgery we heard about by accident. It’s Karen waving, awkwardly, and then less awkwardly the next time.

The line between comedy and cruelty is thinner than I’d like. The trick, I think, is making sure the jokes we tell are better than the letters we send. If someone tries to write you into a world where unicorns are codes and trash cans are crimes and letterhead is a weapon, tear the paper up. Call the firm whose name is on it. Call your neighbor. Call your better self.

And if all else fails, plant a sign on your lawn that says BE KIND in the same font as your mistakes. It won’t make the world less litigious. It will make your block quieter in the way that matters.

THE END!

Disclaimer: Our stories are inspired by real-life events but are carefully rewritten for entertainment. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidental.