According to the DA’s office, it’s done nothing wrong. Assistant District Attorney Chris Bowman says these documents used to trick people into talking to prosecutors are nothing more than “notices” or “notifications.” He compares the use of fake subpoenas to methods used by other, more honest prosecutors’ offices, which use legal letterhead to make the same request, in a much more congenial tone wholly separated from false threats of arrest.
Bowman also says legal letterhead just doesn’t get as much cooperation as his office’s fake subpoenas, which he refuses to refer to as fake subpoenas. Instead, Bowman says these fake legal documents are just a more “formal” version of legitimate methods used elsewhere.
Of course, it’s easy to see how locals might be confused by this “more formal” request, which looks exactly like this [PDF]: