A woman who accused former Bachelor star Clayton Echard of impregnating her has been indicted in Arizona on a slew of felony fraud charges after investigators found that her claims were not true and that she had gone to extreme lengths to manipulate him.
Laura Owens, 34, had originally filed a paternity suit against Echard in 2023, seeking child support, alleging that she had become pregnant with twins, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said in a news release on Tuesday.
Echard, who was a contestant on The Bachelorette in 2021 and then selected to star as The Bachelor in 2022, denied Owens’ allegations.
He stated that their brief encounter was limited to oral sex and did not involve intercourse, according to the indictment.
Owens then dropped her claim, alleging she’d had a miscarriage. Her testimony was brought into question by Judge Julie Mata of Maricopa County Superior Court after Owens “made several inconsistent statements during a paternity hearing” involving Echard, according to the indictment.
Fighting back against the ruling, Owens argued that she had provided positive at-home pregnancy tests, a urine test from an urgent care facility and a blood test from a lab, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
She also accused the judge of being influenced by Echard's celebrity status.
“It seems clear to me that Judge Mata would not have allowed this case to go on if Clayton had not been a former Bachelor star,” Owens wrote. “Because Clayton had a high-profile status, Judge Mata seemed determined to drag this case out.”
But Judge Mata, who deemed Owens’ claims as fraudulent and baseless, accused the woman of a pattern of deception, and then awarded Echard attorneys' fees and referred the case for criminal prosecution by the county attorney’s office in 2024.
Investigators found that between May 2023 and June 2024, Owens had fabricated key evidence, including altering a sonogram and creating a fake pregnancy video. She was also found to have lied several times under oath, investigators said.
Prosecutors allege Owens had carried out a deliberate plan to defraud Echard by faking her pregnancy and this week, a grand jury indicted Owens on one count of fraudulent schemes, one count of forgery, four counts of perjury and one count of tampering with physical evidence.
Owens has not yet publicly commented on the indictment, but Echard responded to the news on Instagram, thanking God for the decision by the grand jury and saying “this nightmare is finally over.”
“Justice has finally been served!!” he wrote in the caption of the Instagram reel. “Thank you all for your continued support in helping me seek justice. It has been a long, tiresome road, but we have reached the end point of where we hoped to be. It’s nothing but celebratory dance moves for the foreseeable future from here on out.”
In the video, Echard also thanked Rachel Mitchell, the Maricopa County Attorney, and the investigators for “serving up justice.”
