Mayor and Councilor Seek United Front to Reopen Federal Corruption Investigation
METHUEN, MA – Mayor D.J. Beauregard and City Councilor Mike Simard have submitted the following letter and an accompanying joint resolution for consideration at the City Council’s October 5, 2026 meeting. The proposal calls for the Mayor and City Council to send the letter jointly to the Department of Justice, presenting a united front in seeking to reopen the federal investigation into corruption involving the former leadership of the Methuen Police Department.
The proposed letter appears in full below.
The Honorable Leah B. Foley
United States Attorney
District of Massachusetts
Re: Request to reopen the federal investigation into Methuen corruption
Dear United States Attorney Foley:
We write jointly as the Mayor and City Council of the City of Methuen to ask you to reopen the federal investigation into corruption involving the former leadership of the Methuen Police Department, or direct a fresh and independent review of the evidence gathered in that investigation.
On September 18, 2026, former Police Chief Joseph Solomon pleaded guilty to all 17 charges against him, including perjury and placing the public’s safety at risk by rigging the Massachusetts Civil Service system to knowingly hire individuals to enforce the law without proper training or legitimate police academy credentials as required by law. Former City Councilor and “police officer” Sean Fountain had previously pleaded guilty in a related case involving similar charges. Their convictions establish serious criminal wrongdoing. However, they do not answer the full set of questions surrounding the 2017 police contracts, the favors that preceded or followed the approval of those contracts, Fountain’s appointment and continued service, or the conduct of others who have never faced charges.
In the City’s opinion, those questions are substantial. In February 2017, the City Council approved a contract that would have made Solomon one of the highest paid law enforcement officials in the country. During the following six months, Solomon gave police department jobs to two councilors, including Fountain, and elevated the relative of another councilor to the rank of police captain. In September, the Council approved a separate superior officers’ contract containing costly provisions that City leaders did not understand. The Massachusetts Inspector General later found that Solomon and former police captain and union president Gregory Gallant put their financial interests ahead of the public’s, and that material pay provisions had been added without City leaders’ knowledge.
Fountain’s case raises another set of grave questions. He masqueraded as a police officer despite lacking the required qualifications and training. A forged police academy certificate was used to conceal his lack of training and keep him on the force. He was paid at the rate of a master patrolman, allowed to work as a detective, and testified in at least one murder trial. While impersonating a duly qualified officer, he arrested and detained more than 40 people. To those deprived of their liberty, these encounters were tantamount to kidnapping. The conduct of Solomon, Fountain, and numerous other unindicted co-conspirators in the state cases has exposed the City of Methuen to potentially disastrous civil liability for years to come. We ask your office to examine the legality of those detentions, Fountain’s role in criminal investigations and prosecutions, and the conduct of everyone who enabled him to exercise police authority.
Andrea Estes’s reporting in The Boston Globe documented that a federal grand jury was investigating the police contracts and that prosecutors examined whether their financial consequences had been concealed from City officials. A City-commissioned investigation by the STIRM Group identified a wider pattern of alleged misconduct and raised serious questions about the roles of Gallant and former Massachusetts Police Training Committee executive director Robert Ferullo in the events surrounding Fountain’s appointment.
Despite these allegations and roughly two years of FBI investigative efforts – which were poised to result in a grand jury presentation and numerous federal indictments – City officials were informed by the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland that the federal investigation and prosecution had been abruptly shut down. It is the City’s understanding that the case, though fully ready to be presented to the grand jury, was closed and the presentation was stopped. The late Mayor Neil Perry was among the loudest voices demanding accountability. It was during the week between Mayor Perry’s death and funeral in September 2024 that the City learned that the federal case had been mysteriously abandoned without explanation.
There have since been developments that call for a fresh review. In addition to Solomon’s 17 guilty pleas, Kaylee Baker, a former employee of the Municipal Police Training Committee, has come forward with information and filed a whistleblower lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court: Baker, Kaylee v. The Municipal Police Training Committee, as an Agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Case No. 2584CV00937. The complaint contains troubling allegations and outlines additional facts that are key to the completion of this puzzle, and they warrant further examination by your office.
The STIRM Group’s detailed investigative report found that police credentials had knowingly been falsified. That report, known as the STIRM Report, is available at https://www.methuen.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4951. We urge your office to review it together with the Baker complaint and the state prosecution records.
While Solomon’s admissions of guilt and subsequent incarceration represent some degree of closure, the people of Methuen still have not received a full accounting of what happened in their police department over more than a decade. We ask you to reopen the investigation and review the new evidence concerning Solomon, Fountain, Gallant, Ferullo, and any other person whose conduct warrants examination. We also ask you to consider all applicable federal laws, including fraud, public corruption, civil rights, conspiracy, and racketeering statutes, wherever the evidence and legal elements warrant.
We understand that some conduct may now be beyond the statute of limitations and that your office alone decides whether charges are warranted. We ask you – the new United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts – to examine the full record in light of the guilty pleas and the information that has since come forward. The state cases did not address every question, and the decision by the previous Justice Department leadership to close the federal investigation deserves scrutiny.
The City of Methuen will cooperate fully and provide relevant records and access to personnel. We would welcome an in-person meeting with you and ask that you let us know whether your office will undertake a renewed review, to the extent you are able.
The late Mayor Perry, retired Police Chief Scott McNamara, retired Police Captain Eric Ferreira, and many others fought to bring this conduct to light and obtain justice for Methuen’s residents and the people harmed by these crimes. Solomon’s state court guilty pleas are an important result of that work, but they should not be where the inquiry ends.
Please reopen the federal investigation and determine where the evidence leads. We look forward to hearing from you.