On Tuesday, an Augusta County jury convicted former Nexus Services CEO Michael P. Donovan and his husband, Richard E. Moore, on all six felony counts in the theft of more than $400,000 from Zachary Cruz. The jury took less than three hours.
For anyone who has followed Donovan’s history, the verdict was not a surprise. A redacted Report of Investigation prepared by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that years before Donovan built a business bonding immigrants out of ICE detention, ICE agents were investigating him, and they compiled a criminal history that runs three full pages and sixteen separate arrests.
The ICE file
The document is a Department of Homeland Security, ICE “Report of Investigation Continuation,” Report Number 003, marked Official Use Only. The case number and the subject’s name are redacted, but the details leave little room for doubt about who it describes: a United States citizen born June 28, 1977, the executive director of Nexus Programs, and an outreach pastor at The River Church in Harrisonburg. His place of birth is listed as Pennsylvania or Harrisonburg. Donovan turned 49 this year, which matches that date of birth.
ICE described Nexus Programs as an organization that claimed to offer programs and services designed to reduce jail and prison overcrowding, and noted that open source information described it as a religious organization. At the time of the report, the subject had no active wants or warrants. The last entry in the history is dated December 2012, and the report ends with two words: “Investigation Continues.”
By the numbers
The criminal history in the ICE report covers 1999 through 2012 and lists 16 arrests by 13 different law enforcement agencies, with cases heard in courts from Winchester to Danville and from Arlington to Newport News. Across those arrests are 47 separate charges. The listed outcomes:
- 18 convictions, 11 of them felonies and 7 misdemeanors (several of the misdemeanors were charged as felonies and reduced)
- 24 charges dismissed or nolle prossed
- 5 charges with the disposition listed as unknown
Almost every charge falls into the same family: bad checks, forgery, uttering, grand larceny, obtaining money by false pretenses, identity theft, and fraud against a motel, restaurant or similar business.
1998 to 2001: the Arlington convictions
The heaviest results came out of Arlington County Circuit Court on July 28, 2000. On that date Donovan was found guilty of eight felonies: four counts of grand larceny and four counts of forging and uttering, with offense dates running from April through December 1999. On two of those counts the report lists a sentence of four years in the penitentiary with three years and four months suspended, plus court-appointed supervised probation.
The same period produced a string of lesser convictions:
- Two misdemeanor bad check convictions in Page County General District Court (December 1999 and March 2000)
- A felony charge of unauthorized use of a vehicle, reduced to a misdemeanor conviction in Newport News (February 2000)
- A felony charge of issuing bad checks under $200, reduced to a misdemeanor conviction in Prince William General District Court (March 2000)
- A felony charge of issuing two or more bad checks in 90 days, brought by Harrisonburg police and reduced to a misdemeanor conviction in Rockingham General District Court (December 2000)
On March 20, 2001, Winchester Circuit Court convicted him of felony obtaining money by false pretenses for an offense dated Christmas Eve 1998. The sentence was one year and six months, all suspended, with supervised probation.
Not every case stuck. Six felony forgery, uttering and grand larceny charges brought through Page County and Danville were dismissed in Danville General District Court in July 2001. Eight charges out of Fairfax City were either nolle prossed or have no recorded disposition.
2005 to 2006: Richmond
A 2005 arrest by Richmond police produced two grand larceny charges and a forgery charge. One grand larceny charge was nolle prossed and the forgery was dismissed. The other grand larceny charge ended in a misdemeanor conviction in Henrico General District Court in February 2006 for failure of a bailee to return property under $200, with 12 months imposed and all 12 suspended.
2009 to 2012: two more felony convictions
The pattern picked back up at the end of the decade.
On February 14, 2011, Hanover Circuit Court convicted Donovan of felony bad check larceny of $200 or more. The sentence was five years in the penitentiary with four years and ten months suspended, followed by indefinite probation.
On May 23, 2011, Williamsburg-James City County Circuit Court convicted him of felony obtaining money by false pretenses or larceny of $200 or more, stemming from a June 2009 James City County arrest. The sentence was five years with four suspended, again followed by indefinite probation.
Charges brought in Chesterfield County (motel and restaurant fraud and two counts of bad checks) and in Henrico County (two counts of identity theft and two counts of bad check larceny) were all nolle prossed in 2010.
The last entry in the report is a 2012 Harrisonburg arrest for obtaining money by false pretenses. That felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor conviction in Shenandoah General District Court on December 28, 2012, with 12 months imposed, all suspended, and unsupervised probation.
In short, the indefinite probation from two felony fraud sentences had been imposed only a short time before Donovan went into business offering services to people caught up in the justice system.
The Nexus years
The ICE report stops in 2012. Donovan’s legal troubles did not.
In 2022, Donovan, Moore and former Nexus employee Timothy Shipe were indicted in Augusta County on charges tied to the money Zachary Cruz received from his late adoptive mother’s MetLife policy. Cruz is the younger brother of the Parkland school shooter and lived with Donovan and Moore in Fishersville from around 2018 until 2025.
In 2024, a federal judge in the Western District of Virginia ordered Donovan, Moore, another executive, Nexus Services and its subsidiary to pay more than $811 million in a civil case brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the states of Virginia, New York and Massachusetts over Libre by Nexus’s treatment of immigrant detainees. Shortly afterward the companies were sold for $3.50 to a Pennsylvania bail bondsman.
In March 2025, Donovan was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery after a shoving match with Cruz at the Fishersville home, and prosecutors asked the court to put him back in jail. I have not found a reported outcome for that charge.
In January 2025, Moore was convicted of federal tax charges in the same federal court. He is now serving an 80-month sentence for employment tax fraud.
In March 2026, Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon held Donovan and fellow executive Evan Ajin in civil contempt and declared the sale of Nexus to Libre Immigration Services void.
The Cruz verdict
The Augusta County trial began October 20 after being continued seven times over four years. Prosecutors told the jury that Donovan called MetLife about the death benefit while claiming to work for a law firm representing Nikolas Cruz, that the roughly $426,000 benefit was routed to Donovan and Moore’s home, and that $400,000 was quickly withdrawn from a joint account Moore had opened with Cruz. According to the evidence, about $300,000 went to pay a Nexus debt to the IRS and much of the rest went to the couple’s credit cards, luxury cars and other high-end purchases.
The defense argued that Cruz gave the money away voluntarily and pointed to a 2022 affidavit he signed. Cruz testified that Donovan wrote that affidavit, and a former Nexus employee testified that Cruz did not.
The jury found both men guilty of obtaining money by false pretenses, financial exploitation of an incapacitated adult, and embezzlement, plus conspiracy to commit each of those offenses. Both had elected to be sentenced by the judge. Judge Sean Workowski set sentencing for February 12, 2027. Shipe is scheduled to appear in court on his own charges on November 4.
A new charge
Donovan will not be going home in the meantime. On October 20, the day his trial opened, Augusta County deputies arrested him at the courthouse on one count of forcible sodomy of a child under 13. The sheriff’s office says the charge stems from an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of a juvenile male over a period of several years. Rocktown Now reported that prosecutors presented recorded interviews with at least four young men at his bond hearing, and a circuit judge denied bond. He is being held at Middle River Regional Jail, with a preliminary hearing set for December 16 in Augusta County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.
That charge has not been tried, and Donovan is presumed innocent of it. The sheriff’s office says its investigation is ongoing and more charges are possible. Anyone with information is asked to call the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office at 540-245-5333.
The pattern
Put the ICE file next to the last four years of headlines and a single thread runs through it. In 1999 the charges were bad checks and forged instruments. In 2011 they were false pretenses and bad check larceny. In 2026 a jury found that he took a vulnerable young man’s inheritance under false pretenses. The amounts grew from under $200 to more than $400,000, and the victims grew from merchants to a young man living under his own roof.
The man who spent two decades in and out of Virginia courtrooms on fraud charges went on to run a company that sold itself as a protector of people facing the justice system. A federal judge has already found that company owes more than $811 million. A state jury has now found him guilty of six felonies. His sentencing is set for February.
Sources
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Report of Investigation Continuation, Report Number 003 (redacted)
- Jury delivers verdict in former Nexus executives’ trial, WHSV
- Nexus executives found guilty of defrauding Zachary Cruz, Virginia Lawyers Weekly / Staunton News Leader
- Former Nexus leader Michael Donovan charged with forcible sodomy of a child, WHSV
- Bond denied for former Nexus CEO charged on forcible sodomy, Rocktown Now
- Nexus executives held in contempt for $811 million owed, WHSV
- Federal agency alleges Nexus, associates still violating court orders, WMRA
- Nexus executive charged with assault and battery, WHSV
- Nexus leader faces assault charge ahead of exploitation trial, changes attorneys, WMRA