By Christopher Johnson
A second day of preliminary examination testimony in Lansing added sharp new financial detail to the embezzlement case against David Coker Jr., whose attorney is asking a district court judge to dismiss the charges before trial. Judge Kristen Simmons said she will issue her ruling on May 7.
Coker is a Clare businessman who formerly led both the Clare County Republican Party and the Clare Area Chamber of Commerce. He then comes as former aide to Republican ex-House Speaker Jason Wentworth, and faces seven felony counts filed by Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office last May. The charges stem from a $25 million state grant earmarked for a health park in Clare, of which the state had wired nearly $9.9 million to Coker’s nonprofit, Complete Health Park, on January 9, 2023.
Testimony last week established that two board members were uncomfortable with Coker’s control over the organization and that a state grants manager said Coker told him directly he was not personally profiting from the project. A claim prosecutors say was false.
Wednesday’s hearing filled in the financial picture considerably. A forensic accountant for the Attorney General’s office, Alex Ungren, testified that Coker controlled more than $820,000 of that initial wire. Within days of the money arriving, Coker used more than $71,000 to pay off three vehicle loans and spent another $77,000 at a car dealership, according to testimony. He also spent money on precious metals and coins. And in April 2023, Assistant Attorney General Kelli Megyesi told the court, Coker spent nearly $200,000 on land along M-10 in Farwell.
Ungren testified that he flagged the transfers as questionable in part because the grant agreement capped what Coker could earn annually at approximately $212,000 — a figure tied to top-level state employee compensation. The roughly $630,000 Ungren tracked through Coker’s accounts, he said, far exceeded that threshold.
Anthony Demasi was listed as a program manager for the Clare project in early documents and helped draft a feasibility study. While weighing in with the Review, he pushed back on the framing that cast him as a co-conspirator to Coker’s machinations. He said Goldman Advisors Group, LLC, was hired specifically to produce the feasibility study that underpinned the grant application. Which is a document he described as exhaustive.
“It gets into marketing, financial validity, how you can build a place with the budget in place, environmental studies — anything you’re going to learn as an MBA student to write a feasibility study would be in that,” Demasi said. “It wasn’t anything like a sales pitch. It was more: this project is feasible due to these market conditions.”
What he didn’t get, he said, was paid. Demasi says the state allocated $250,000 specifically for the feasibility study, money he alleges Coker kept. His firm had a separate contract for $150,000, of which they received roughly $20,000 before payments stopped. A second contracted entity, Beta Sole Foundation, hired for marketing and PR work, was also only partially paid, he said. Demasi has since sued Coker over the unpaid contract. He acknowledged his prior conviction and said he understood why prosecutors flagged the disclosure issue but noted the AG’s office has publicly stated he will not be charged. His sharpest words were reserved not for the legal proceedings, but for what the project could have been.
“I was proud to be a part of it,” he said. “And then rip it away. We don’t get paid, and Clare misses out on a great opportunity. Then to add real insult to injury, I find out the man’s stealing money.”
Allegedly, Coker never disclosed Demasi’s criminal history to state officials, in potential violation of a grant provision prohibiting anything that creates “an appearance of impropriety.”
Defense attorney Josh Blanchard pushed back on multiple fronts. He argued that Coker’s spending was legitimate because Complete Health Park’s board had approved a contract paying IW Consulting—Coker’s for-profit firm—seven percent of the project’s total cost. Blanchard also challenged the conflict-of-interest allegation directly, pointing out that Coker’s role as principal of IW Consulting has been a matter of public record since 2020 and that state grants manager Darrell Harden never asked whether IW Consulting was connected to Coker.
“He was never asked about it by HHS,” Blanchard said. “There never was an attempt by Mr. Coker to hide” his role with the consulting firm.
Prosecutors countered that the grant agreement placed the burden on Complete Health Park and not the state. To proactively disclose conflicts of interest.
Megyesi argued Coker wore too many hats, running the nonprofit’s meetings, appointing board members with limited financial experience, and personally approving the consulting fees that flowed to his own firm.
Attorney General Nessel has said she does not plan to charge anyone else in the case, including former Speaker of the Michigan House Jason Wentworth or state Rep. Tom Kunse, whose family sold land to Coker’s nonprofit for $3.5 million. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Judge Simmons will decide May 7 whether sufficient evidence exists to send the case to trial.
