Prosecutor charged with making false police report, resigns

Lynn Nichols.

An Assistant District Attorney resigned her position, and then surrendered to authorities Friday after she was allegedly caught filing a false police report against an ex-boyfriend.

Lynn Nichols, who served as the assistant chief of the homicide unit, allegedly pressured a Philadelphia Police officer to withdraw a report of a stolen vehicle in October 2012 to protect her then-boyfriend, and then after the two split, tried to re-file the report in an act of revenge, according to the Attorney General’s office.

The identity of the police officer was not revealed.

According to the Attorney General’s report, Nichols approached the owner of the stolen car a year after the incident and months after breaking up with the boyfriend, and since she knew where the car was stashed away, cooked up a plot to re-report the car as stolen.

Nichols allegedly called 911 from the owner’s home phone, while the owner was there, and reported the car was stolen that day from outside the owner’s home.

When police arrived, Nichols acted as the owner’s sister while the required paperwork was signed.

When the police left, Nichols, again acting as the owner of the car, called a local New Jersey police department and informed them that she reported her vehicle stolen in Philadelphia and received information that it may be at a specific address, according to the Attorney General’s office.

“The local New Jersey police department located the vehicle at the address and quickly knew it was not stolen that day because of its condition,” according to the news release.

When the New Jersey police officer contacted the vehicle owner, she gave up the hoax.

Nichols, who worked in the district attorney’s office for 22 years, resigned after she was suspended by the DA’s office.

“Lynn Nichols had a long and successful career in this office,” District Attorney Seth Williams said in a news release. “While it is with both professional and personal sadness that I am making this announcement today, we must maintain the highest standards of conduct in my office, and the legal process must take its course.”

Nichols was charged with making false reports to law enforcement authorities and obstruction of justice.

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