The former superintendent of the Anson-Madison Water District is set to go on trial for a second time after prosecutors abruptly dropped a yearslong theft case the morning of his first scheduled trial last year.

This time around, nearly four years after he was initially charged, Michael Corson, 56, of Madison, is charged with aggravated criminal invasion of computer privacy, a Class C felony-level offense.

Prosecutors are now alleging that Corson “did intentionally or knowingly damage a computer resource of Anson Madison Water District, having no reasonable ground to believe that he had the right to do so,” according to an indictment that a Somerset County grand jury returned in July 2024.

The alleged crime was committed in Madison between Nov. 23, 2021, and March 12, 2022, the indictment says. Corson’s employment with the district was terminated in December 2021 .

Corson has pleaded not guilty. He was unsuccessful in a bid to get the charge dismissed earlier this year.

The trial is expected to begin Monday morning at Somerset County Superior Court at 41 Court St. in Skowhegan and is scheduled for two days.

“We picked a jury — but we did that last time, too,” said Corson’s attorney, Darrick X. Banda, of the Augusta law firm Bourget & Banda, in an interview Thursday. “We’re set to go. So, yeah, I mean, anything can happen.”

District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, the top prosecutor in Kennebec and Somerset counties, declined to comment when reached Thursday.

“I do not wish to speak about a case so close to the trial date,” Maloney said in a text message. “My preference is always for the jury to learn all the information in the courtroom.”

Maloney called the previous accusations against Corson — investigators alleged he personally profited by selling old water lines — a case of public corruption.

Banda, who described the previous theft case as a waste of time and resources, called prosecutors’ handling of the case “bizarre.”

“In terms of what their theory is, I have an idea,” Banda said. “But, in my opinion, No. 1, they have no evidence. And what their theory is doesn’t align with what the statute prohibits. I think this is going to be a pretty quick trial, if I was to guess, but I could be wrong.”

Banda said the last offer from prosecutors to settle the case without a trial would have involved Corson pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge, resulting in no jail time and no fines. 

That indicates, he said, the state’s case could be weak.

“My view on this is that the prosecutor’s office should let this go,” Banda said. “But for whatever reason … I feel like there’s pressure being put on them to go forward with it.”

What exactly prosecutors believe Corson did is unclear, beyond the one-sentence indictment.

The language in the indictment is defined in state statute. Damage means “to destroy, alter, disrupt, delete, add, modify, or rearrange any computer resource by any means.” Computer resource means “a computer program, computer software, computer system, computer network, computer information or any combination thereof.”

A few months after Corson was initially charged with theft, in March 2022, the Water District sued Corson in U.S. District Court in Bangor, alleging he changed passwords to important Water District email and software applications while on administrative leave and did not provide them after he was fired. 

Water District staff, however, regained access to the accounts soon after the lawsuit was filed. Both sides agreed to dismiss the federal lawsuit in May 2022 as they had reached a settlement, according to court records.

Kirsten Hebert, executive director of the Maine Rural Water Association, which operates the Anson-Madison district, wrote in an email in April that she could not disclose the details of the district’s agreement with Corson. 

She confirmed the district signed an agreement with Corson on March 18, 2022, two months before the federal lawsuit was dropped.

Banda, whose law partner Ronald W. Bourget represented Corson in the federal lawsuit, said prosecutors are barred from mentioning the contents of the confidential agreement during the trial.

“The state assured me that they are not going to get into any discussion about that,” Banda said. “I am going to be keenly watching to make sure that they don’t get into that, and we’ll be ready to object if they try to.”

Corson and a district foreman, Michael Jordan, were originally charged with theft in December 2021 following a Somerset County Sheriff’s Office investigation that began with a tip from a member of the Water District’s board of trustees.

Investigators believed at the time that the two had sold old water lines to a scrap metal dealer and kept the proceeds totaling more than $12,000. Keeping the proceeds was alleged to have been against the district’s policy, although one industry leader told the Morning Sentinel that is a common practice in Maine.

Both Corson and the foreman were also fired. Around the same time, the district fired its entire staff, and its trustees began contracting with the Maine Rural Water Association to operate the district.

In February 2022, the theft charges against Corson and Jordan were dropped after Maloney’s office said it learned of new evidence.

But prosecutors soon reversed course, and a Somerset County grand jury indicted Corson on two counts of theft later that month. Jordan was not indicted at that time.

At the time, Banda called the move a politically motivated decision in response to public backlash following the earlier dismissal.

Corson pleaded not guilty to the theft charges in April 2022. 

In August 2023, a Somerset County grand jury returned a superseding indictment that added two counts of theft. Corson ultimately faced class B, C, D and E counts of theft by misapplication of property. The different classes accounted for different dollar values of the items stolen, with the most severe Class B count alleging theft of property with a value of more than $10,000.

Those were the charges prosecutors dismissed right as the trial was set to begin last March. Maloney said at the time the move came after closed-door discussions.

Banda tried to get the new computer privacy charge dismissed earlier this year. He argued that prosecutors did not move forward with the case “with due diligence.”

Superior Court Chief Justice Robert E. Mullen disagreed. He ruled that there was no unnecessary delay in bringing the computer privacy case to trial. Mullen also ruled there were no double jeopardy issues with the case.