The financial exploitation trial of former Nexus executives Michael Donovan and Richard Moore began in Verona on Tuesday. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The Augusta County Circuit Court impaneled a jury around 1 p.m. on Tuesday. Counsel for the prosecution and defense agreed on 15 county residents to fill the jury box – 12 jurors and three alternates, who will observe the proceedings alongside the central 12 and can take a juror's place reaching a verdict if someone becomes ill or unavailable.
The jury is tasked with deciding whether Donovan and Moore each committed six felonies by spending the money of a young man in their care – obtaining money by false pretenses, financially exploiting a vulnerable adult, embezzlement, and conspiracy to commit each aforementioned crime.
The couple has long been entangled with the legal system. Their defunct business, Nexus, made more than $200 million through a deceitful and coercive immigration bond business, according to a federal judge's ruling in one civil case. Moore is currently serving a federal prison sentence of six years and eight months for withholding more than $3 million in taxes from the Internal Revenue Service. The federal courts are still waiting on a report on their finances from a forensic accountant in a multi-million dollar lawsuit that's dragged on since 2018. A federal judge requested an update on that report by the end of this month.
The couple was arrested in the financial exploitation case in 2022, after law enforcement began looking into their relationship with Zachary Cruz, a young man who lived with the couple from 2018 to 2025. Cruz, the younger brother of the convicted Parkland, Florida school shooter, went to live with them after the highly publicized crime. Authorities allege that the following year, Donovan and Moore, with the help of Nexus employees, stole a life insurance payout left to Cruz by his late mother totalling more than $400,000.
Based on court records, the theft allegedly took place a few months after the life insurance money came up in a legal deposition. Cruz, with the representation of Nexus attorneys, had filed lawsuits against Broward County officials who arrested him for trespassing on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School grounds following the shooting. In the deposition, while talking about the cost of Cruz's bond in that case, the officials' attorney mentions he inherited a life insurance policy.
While Cruz continued to live with the couple for around two and a half years after their arrest for his exploitation, he has since moved out and is now under the legal guardianship of Shenandoah Valley Social Services.
Judge Sean Workowski dismissed the jury for the day after their selection Tuesday afternoon. The proceedings are set to resume first thing Wednesday morning with opening statements.
