One-time owner of Portland Nitro ultimate frisbee team also faces state charges in Medford drive-by shootings
A former Jacksonville contractor and one-time owner of the Portland Nitro ultimate frisbee team stood for sentencing in U.S. District Court in Medford on Friday, nearly a year and a half after his arrest on tax evasion, employment tax crimes, bank and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Joel Matthew Caswell, 32, was sentenced to 42 months, or three and a half years, in federal prison and five years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $1,198,799.83 in restitution to the IRS, according to an Oregon Department of Justice news release.
Caswell, who appeared before Judge Michael J. McShane on Friday, appeared in June at the Medford federal courthouse for a plea hearing, during which the Rogue Valley Times reported Caswell agreed to plead guilty to one-third of the charges he originally faced. His sentencing was set for Oct. 9 but was moved up in recent weeks.
Caswell, who faced up to 30 years in prison based on his original charges, was arrested by the FBI and indicted in April 2025 on 23 felony charges — including wire fraud, identity theft and tax evasion for defrauding federal pandemic-era programs.
According to documents and statements made in court, Caswell owned and operated three logging and construction businesses that employed approximately 40 employees, the Friday release said.
From 2018 through 2022, Caswell withheld employment taxes from his employees’ pay and willfully failed to pay over these taxes to the IRS, prosecutors said. Caswell attempted to evade these and other taxes by directing customers to write checks to another company or to him personally, moving business funds and lying to IRS collection officers, the release said.
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“Separately, between 2022 and 2024, Caswell executed multiple fraud schemes that involved submitting fabricated financial records to a bank, a private lender, and the Small Business Administration to secure loans,” according to prosecutors.
Court filings state he transferred $70,000 of the proceeds from his scheme to be used as a deposit toward renting Providence Park in Portland for an ultimate frisbee tournament. Former players have alleged they weren’t getting paid and were forced to pay for their own hotel rooms and other play-related expenses, according to reporting by Your Oregon News, which is a news partner with the Times.
Caswell also used the personal identifying information of another person to obtain a residential mortgage, the release said.
During his plea hearing in June, Caswell pleaded guilty to three counts of tax evasion, three counts of willful failure to pay over employment taxes, one count of bank fraud, one count of wire fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division and U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford for the District of Oregon made the announcement on Friday. The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation, the FBI and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. Assistant U.S. Attorney John C. Brassell of the District of Oregon and Trial Attorney J. Parker Gochenour of the Criminal Division’s Tax Section are prosecuting the case.
Settlement hearing scheduled in drive-by shootings
While Caswell was originally granted pre-trial release in the federal case, he was arrested and has been lodged in the Jackson County Jail since Aug. 27, 2025, in connection to a pair of drive-by shootings in northeast Medford. Medford police said the incidents — to which Caswell later pleaded not guilty — occurred July 26 and 27, 2025, in the 3600 block of Carnelian Street.
If Caswell serves a full 42 months on the federal case, he could remain in prison until March 2029. However, he awaits trial in the drive-by shootings case on two counts each for unlawful use of a weapon, recklessly endangering another person and first-degree criminal mischief.
While originally held on $1 million bail in the shootings case, the amount was later reduced to $750,000, with bail eventually being removed and Caswell released due to delays in the case. However, he remained lodged on the federal charges on a federal hold.
The drive-by shootings case was set for a pre-trial status check Aug. 24 in Jackson County Circuit Court but has since been continued until Oct. 26, with a settlement conference tentatively set for Oct. 7.
According to court documents, Caswell made a request to self-surrender, which was denied.
Calls by the Times to Caswell’s family members via phone, and to his defense attorney Christopher Missiaen, were not immediately returned on Friday.
Former partner speaks out
Caswell’s former business partner, Tim Thompson, who attended court in June for Caswell’s plea hearing, called resolution to the federal case “an important step toward accountability” for Caswell, whom Thompson said is often referred to as “Teflon Joel,” alluding to dozens of unresolved civil cases and judgements against Caswell.
Thompson, who alleged he has been subjected to frivolous lawsuits by Caswell in recent years, has declined to go into detail on Caswell’s criminal charges but previously confirmed to the Times that the offices he shared with Caswell were raided by federal law enforcement in August 2022 and that he fired Caswell as the company’s timber and land manager in February 2023. Caswell was expelled from the partnership in August 2023, Thompson said.
“Hearing him plead guilty to eight federal crimes brings a measure of validation after years of uncertainty and litigation. While some may have hoped to hear a longer sentence than 42 months, the criminal case is only one part of the process,” Thompson told the Times at the court hearing in June.
“There are still outstanding civil matters that will continue to move through the courts, and I remain committed to seeing those resolved through the legal system,” he said.
In addition to the federal and state criminal cases, Caswell was the subject of dozens of civil cases over the past decade against his numerous business holdings registered with the Oregon Secretary of State. The cases amount to a combined millions in unpaid judgments, according to Jackson County Circuit Court records.
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or buffy.pollock@rv-times.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.