WOLVES IN SHEPHERD’S CLOTHING
A children’s charity published public records. The answer wasn’t an answer. It was a lawyer — and then another one. Neither should reassure anybody.
Part Two — “The Lawyer Who Wasn’t There”
A Project Milk Carton / 17SOG Investigation · Part 2 of 4
A note on sourcing.
Every quotation and record in this series is drawn from preserved primary materials — the cease-and-desist email reproduced here with its full technical headers, public court and licensing records, and the lawyers’ own public posts — each retained under chain of custody. Where a statement is our analysis, we say so. Each person named was contacted for comment; the documented outreach and its outcome appear at the end.
In Part One, a sex-crime accusation against the founder of a child-welfare charity traveled all the way to a retired general — and fell apart the second anyone asked to see it. No police report. No court record. No message anyone would produce.
So the charity did the most ordinary thing a watchdog can do. It kept reporting on public records — IRS filings, state licenses, court documents — and it asked, in writing, to be shown the evidence behind the accusation.
It got an answer. It just wasn’t from anyone who could prove they had standing to send it.
It got two lawyers. Look closely at each, because together they tell you everything about who you’re dealing with.
The first lawyer wore a dead name
At 5:31 in the morning on June 15, 2026, an email hit the inbox of ceo@projectmilkcarton.org. Subject line: “Immediate Removal of Public Posts Identifying Kelli Cravens and Affiliated Entities.” It claimed to come from an attorney. It made a lawyer’s demands — delete everything, by noon, or face “significant legal consequences.” It signed off:
“Andrew Howard, Counsel for Kelli Cravens.”
There is a real attorney named Andrew Howard. We need to be precise, because precision is the only weapon honest people need: the real Andrew Howard had nothing to do with this. Project Milk Carton’s founder personally telephoned the licensed Andrew Howards practicing in that part of Texas. None of them represents Kelli Cravens. None of them sent that email. None of them had ever heard of any of this.
Someone took a real, innocent lawyer’s name and wore it like a mask to frighten a children’s charity into silence.
And it was a cheap mask. The email came from andrewhowardlaw@gmail.com — a free consumer Gmail. No firm. No letterhead. No office. No phone. No bar number. The message was composed in Microsoft Word and pasted in. The full technical headers — which the charity preserved — confirm it was genuinely sent from that Gmail account, and confirm nothing else, because a Gmail account proves a person can type, not that a person can practice law. The username appears on zero legal directories. The account exists on zero other platforms but Gmail itself — the digital signature of a burner made for exactly one job.
Project Milk Carton’s Jeremy Sinks did the simplest thing in the world. He wrote back and asked the one question every real lawyer answers in their sleep: what’s your bar number, firm, and address?
Silence. No second letter. No bar number. The lawyer who had demanded silence by noon vanished by lunch.
In Texas, falsely holding yourself out as a lawyer to obtain a benefit is a felony — Penal Code § 38.122. We do not claim to know whose hands were on that keyboard; that is a question for the authorities, and Project Milk Carton has put it in front of them. What we can say is plain: a real attorney’s identity was stolen and weaponized against a charity that publishes public records — and the only people who stood to gain were the ones it was sent to protect.
The second lawyer was real. That’s the problem.
Eight days later, on June 23, a second cease-and-desist arrived — this one from a genuine, licensed attorney:
John H. Thaler of Harris/Thaler Law, on behalf of the same clients.
A licensed lawyer sending a demand letter is lawful and unremarkable. What its author did next was neither.
A cease-and-desist exists to move a dispute off the public square and through counsel. Within hours, Thaler did the opposite — he went onto X and personally went after the very people his letter said could only be contacted through him. In posts the charity captured and preserved, he wrote:
“…how lawyers like me handle cease and desist situations with folks like you who continually harass others while thinking they can do so with impunity? … Happy to show you the light. But I advise you, this light won’t be good.”
Read that again. A lawyer demands silence in writing, then takes to social media to promise a target that a “light” is coming and it “won’t be good.” You may decide for yourself whether that is the conduct of a serious officer of the court. We report only his own published words.
And then there is his record — the part that turns a question into an alarm, and all of it is public.
The California State Bar’s own files show that John Harris Thaler, Bar No. 150290, was publicly reproved by the State Bar on July 7, 2022 — formal discipline; the State of California, on the record, finding that one of its officers of the court crossed a line.
That was not the end of it. In August 2023, by the account of the Rose Law Group Reporter, Thaler “faced sentencing in a Mesa courtroom for 13 misdemeanor protection-order violations.” Looking at six months in jail, he did what the people in this series do when the walls close in: he didn’t show. He “skipped the hearing and is currently on the run from police,” the outlet reported in August 2023.
And the pattern underneath it should stop you cold, because it is the same pattern this entire series is about. Thaler was the source of allegations — aired at an Arizona legislative hearing in February 2023 — that a Mexican drug cartel, with the help of a church, was bribing officials and judges with forged property deeds. The claims were so baseless that outrage over them helped get a sitting state lawmaker expelled from office. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had already reviewed his earlier versions and dismissed them. Federal judges who handled his lawsuits called them “frivolous” and “delusional and fantastical.”
That is the man a self-described child-protection foundation chose to carry its threats: an attorney under public bar discipline, by an independent outlet’s account a fugitive from his own sentencing, with a documented history of spectacular accusations that collapse the instant anyone in authority looks at them. Sound familiar?
And it is not behind him. A related Arizona hearing in the matter is set for July 22, 2026, and his California bar standing remains a matter of public record. We will update this report as those proceedings develop — watch the date.
Which brings us to the question this whole installment has been driving toward.
Why this lawyer — for this work?
Shepherds Watch Foundation tells the public it exists to protect children from trafficking. It asks the public for money to do it. An organization that holds itself out as a shield for kids is telling you, every time it fundraises, that its judgment can be trusted with the most vulnerable people alive.
So look at the judgment on display. When a watchdog asked this organization’s circle to prove a sex-crime accusation, the answer came in two envelopes: first a phantom wearing a stolen lawyer’s name, and then a real attorney already under public bar discipline — and, by an independent outlet’s account, a fugitive from his own sentencing on thirteen protection-order violations — who answered a request to take things private by going public to promise a “light” that “won’t be good.”
A reasonable person is allowed to ask — and we are asking, plainly, as our assessment and labeled as such: if your mission is protecting children, why is this who’s speaking for you? An organization whose first instinct was the safety of kids would have fled these two — a phantom and a fugitive — the moment they appeared. This one made them its messengers. You do not need a fake lawyer and a reproved one to answer public-records reporting. You need only to answer the records. No one ever has.
In Part Three, we follow the money the records do show — and we count what this campaign cost a charity whose only offense was reading a 990 out loud.
What this article does NOT claim.
We do not claim to know who sent the “Andrew Howard” email, and we attribute it to no named individual. We do not allege the real attorney Andrew Howard did anything wrong — to the contrary, the record indicates his name was used without his involvement. As to John Thaler, we report only (a) his own public posts and (b) his publicly recorded State Bar discipline; we draw no conclusion about the merits of his clients’ position, and our question about the foundation’s choice of counsel is expressly our assessment, not a statement of fact about him. We do not claim the two letters were coordinated.
Keep up the good work you are doing!
Plus continue to expose the fraud, corruption, and trafficking of children.