Randy Corporon, center left, listens to remarks during a hearing at Denver’s City and County Building on Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021. (Denver Post file photo)
Due to the alleged actions of two people — an anonymous hacker in Hong Kong and a talk radio host in Denver — Anne O’Riordan doubts she will ever be able to retire.
“I certainly miss being able to go see my kids,” the 66-year-old Denverite said on Tuesday. “They live in California and Wyoming, and to travel to see them is impossible.”
“I am taking some classes and trying to figure out how I can make more money,” she said.
On Monday, O’Riordan sued the Aurora lawyer and KNUS host Randy Corporon, accusing him of ignoring obvious red flags in the days and hours before he unknowingly wired $375,000 of O’Riordan’s money to an account in Hong Kong at the urging of a hacker there.
Corporon did not answer BusinessDen’s requests for comment on O’Riordan’s lawsuit.
In 2021, Corporon was the divorce attorney for O’Riordan’s ex-husband, according to Monday’s lawsuit, and after the couple sold their marital home in south Denver, it was Corporon who held the proceeds in escrow. O’Riordan said she had no qualms with that arrangement.
Randy Corporon has been a licensed attorney in Colorado since 1998. (Facebook)
“I knew who Randy Corporon was. My husband listened to his talk radio show all the time, so I heard him on the radio and I knew that he was active in Republican politics and I thought, ‘Well, there’s not going to be any danger of losing the money if it’s in Randy’s account.’ He just never seemed like he would get tricked into thinking I was on a plane to Hong Kong.”
In May 2022, the divorce was settled and O’Riordan was to receive her half of the estate, about $375,000. But when Corporon emailed O’Riordan’s divorce attorney, Danielle Demkowicz, asking O’Riordan to pick up a check, a hacker who had infiltrated Demkowicz’s email told him to instead wire the money to a bank in Hong Kong, where O’Riordan was headed.
“The emails were so ridiculous. My name was spelled wrong, it wasn’t my phone number, it wasn’t my email, the English was bad,” said O’Riordan, a licensed English teacher.
“It was the end of May and I worked in a garden center,” she said of that hectic time. “I wouldn’t have been able to go across the street, let alone get on a plane for Hong Kong.”
When Corporon called his client — O’Riordan’s ex-husband — the client expressed surprise she was en-route to Hong Kong and questioned the decision to wire money there, the lawsuit said. But Corporon spoke with the hacker by phone and, convinced it was O’Riordan despite her accent, wired $374,290. O’Riordan is from Colorado and doesn’t have an Asian accent.
Corporon paid himself $425 per hour for the nearly two hours it took for him to wire the money, the lawsuit said, by deducting it from what he thought he was sending O’Riordan.
The attorney reportedly noticed his mistake three days later, when his client texted him that “his children were coming to Denver to visit their mom and she was NOT in Hong Kong.” Corporon asked him if O’Riordan has “any kind of accent” and was told she does not.
“He has said that he feels responsible,” O’Riordan said of Corporon on Tuesday.
Corporon has been a lawyer in Colorado since 1998 and has an unblemished disciplinary record, state records show. He handles a variety of legal matters, with a focus on constitutional law. Corporon is also a Colorado delegate to the Republican National Committee.
In late 2021, Corporon and KNUS owner Salem Media were sued by Eric Coomer, who accuses them of defaming him by suggesting on-air that Coomer and his company, Dominion Voting Systems, rigged the 2020 presidential election. That case is now at the Colorado Court of Appeals, where Salem is challenging a Denver judge’s decision not to dismiss it.
O’Riordan, meanwhile, isn’t sure she will be able to remain in her apartment much longer.
“I am anxious and sleepless and often worry how in the world I can pay my bills in the future,” she told BusinessDen. “Randy sent almost everything I had to Hong Kong.”
