On Monday May 20th, Stan Lee‘s former manager and business partner, Keya Morgan, was charged with five counts of elder abuse, as reported by the NY Post. As per a Los Angeles court official, a warrant for his arrest was issued on Friday with allegations of fraud, forgery and false imprisonment. The 37-year-old NY-based memorabilia collector, writer and producer who was responsible for caring for Lee in his old age, is being accused of abuse by Lee’s family.
Morgan could not be reached for comment, but he previously took to Twitter to defend himself. “I know how upsetting, hurtful and damaging it is to be wrongly accused of a bulls—t lie by #FakeNews. I was falsely accused by 2 con-artists of ‘abusing’ my best friend & partner Stan Lee. Now that the lies have been disproven, I’m in the process of suing the fraudsters,” he wrote On March 15.
Lee, the legendary comic book writer, who passed away in November at the age of 95 after several illnesses, including pneumonia, was lauded as the co-creator of Marvel comics and for creating many of the iconic fictional characters, including superheroes Spider-Man, , Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Daredevil, and Doctor Strange.
Last summer, the Los Angeles Police Department asked attorney Tom Lallas to act as Lee’s legal guardian while the elder abuse allegations were investigated. Lallas filed a 263-page document which featured testimony from Lee’s former nurse and in-home caregiver, Linda Sanchez. Sanchez said she witnessed verbal abuse and financial manipulation by Morgan as well as Lee’s daughter, J.C. Lee.
“Mr. Lee has told me privately that he is giving up, after his daily harassment, and that he believes he has nothing left to live for but to ‘go to sleep’ and ‘die,’ ” Sanchez said in her testimony. “As a result of everything described above, Mr. Lee falls into very dark and depressed moods because he doesn’t have the strength or will to fight anymore.”
While he was alive, Lee dismissed charges of any abuse from by his daughter, J.C. “She is a wonderful daughter. We have occasional spats. But I have occasional spats with everyone,” he said. In April 2018, Lee also stood up for Morgan, threatening to sue those who reported Morgan’s alleged abuse. He said, “I’m going to spend every penny I have to put a stop to this, and to make you sorry that you’ve suddenly gone on a one-man campaign against somebody with no proof, no evidence…but you’ve decided that people are mistreating me.”
