Rod Ponton, a court attorney in Presidio County, Texas, reached the highest echelons of virility after a recorded Zoom meeting in which he is unable to figure out how to turn off the cat filter started making the rounds on the internet.
Naturally, Ponton became an instantly-beloved figure. There are few things funnier than an old guy in a respectable job plodding his way through technological issues, after all.
However, as things tend to always go, our affinity with the silly old cat zoom lawyer soured after journalist Anthony L. Fisher unearthed a 2014 report he wrote about Ponton, detailing an incident in which he used his power in office to harass a former lover.
The article reports on a heavy-handed, and highly-criticised drug raid on smoke shop The Purple Zone, owned by the then-29-year-old Ilana Lipsen, who allegedly had an intimate relationship with Rod Ponton.
Funny story about Rod Ponton, the “Zoom cat lawyer” that everyone’s talking about today.
I reported on him in 2014, when he was a local prosecutor used the power of his office — and roped in federal law enforcement — to harass a former lover. https://t.co/fIuK4hbHfJ
— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonyLfisher) February 10, 2021
On the morning of Wednesday, May 7, 2014 Project Synergy Phase II, a drug takedown involving The Drug Enforcement (DEA), Customs and Border (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security (HSI), Federal Bureau of (FBI), Internal Revenue (IRS) and other federal, state, and local partners, ascended on The Purple Zone.
The report details that an armed DEA-led operation, which was granted a Brewster County search warrant (requested by, you guessed it, Ponton), broke down front door of The Purple Zone, turned off security cameras, and raided Lipsen’s smoke shop in a search for controlled substances. They found none.
During the raid, Illana’s sister, Arielle, was involved in an altercation with a male DEA agent. The DEA agent “told Arielle to stop raising her voice” and leave the store. Arielle reportedly replied, “What are you going to do, shoot me?” Which prompted the agent to arrest her.
“According to Branson and the Lipsens, after being thrown, Arielle’s leg flew up and inadvertently struck the agent in the shin, after which the agent pinned her to the ground with the butt of his rifle,” the report outlines. During the arrest, Arielle sustained a neck injury, which the DEA chalked up to being “a scrape” — denying all possibility that it could have come from an agent’s rifle.
Following the raid, Arielle was indicted for assaulting a federal officer and Ilana was indicted for “receiving ammunition while under indictment.”
Arielle, who worked as a rancher in addition to owning The Purple Zone, owned firearms to protect her horses from predators. She was under indictment following a 2012 raid of the smoke shop — on local drug charges for which she hadn’t been tried or convicted.
The local drug charges stem back from the first of four raids to her store that were instigated by Ponton. In March 2012, “10-12 men came in, SWAT team style” to the store in search of synthetic cannabinoids. As the report outlines, Lipsen was told that she was not under arrest, but was subsequently cuffed and taken to the back of a police van whilst her store was raided.
Eight months after the initial 2012 raid, police returned to arrest Lipsen on felony charges of “possession and distribution of a controlled substance.” Despite lab tests finding no controlled substances except for “MAN-2201,” “XLR-11,” and “UR-144,” which were legal in Texas at the time of the raid.
Those chemicals only became illegal in January 2013, after former President Barack Obama passed the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act.
So you’re probably wondering why Ron Ponton has such a burning vendetta against Ilana Lipsen. So it goes, Lipsen suspects that the unrelenting involvement from law enforcement all comes back to a romantic encounter she had with Rob Ponton as an 18-year-old.
Illana, a Houston native, arrived in Alpine in 2003, with the intent to study equine science at Sul Ross University, with a particular interest in Arabian horses. It was through that interest that she first crossed paths with Ron Ponton, “I was introduced by a mutual acquaintance to a man who had Arabian horses,” she explains.
“He had invited me to meet his horses at his house, and possibly work with them. I thought, ‘Great! A job opportunity.'” The pair went on to share a bottle of wine together, “one thing led to another and I was involved sexually with him.”
After the encounter, Ponton offered to gift his horses to Lipsen, though she declined as she felt the familiar pang of post-coital regret and was “disgusted with herself.” Lipsen distanced herself from Ponton and his horses, though she believes that the County District Attorney did not take being rebuffed kindly. Alleging that she once saw Ponton drive slowly past her house “almost like he was stalking me.”
It’s all a bizarre, gross situation. Immobilising the DEA to fulfil some kind of personal (and pathetic) conflict against a woman is truly depraved and morally bankrupt. So sorry y’all, Zoom Cat Lawyer is no friend of ours.
You can read Anthony L. Fisher’s full piece, Sex, Spice, and Small-Town Texas Justice: The Purple Zone Raid, here. There’s also a mini-documentary about the saga, which you can watch below.
