Hollister
– A father and son accused of
”
tricking small claims judges
”
and turning local courts into a
”
lawsuit mill
”
were arrested Wednesday on 88 counts of forgery, grand theft and
other felony charges, according to the Santa Clara County District
Attorney’s Office.
Hollister – A father and son accused of “tricking small claims judges” and turning local courts into a “lawsuit mill” were arrested Wednesday on 88 counts of forgery, grand theft and other felony charges, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
The charges stem from hundreds of lawsuits filed by Vincent Cardinalli Sr., 64, of Hollister, and his son Paul Stephen Greer, 30, of Clovis, in hopes of collecting towing and storage fees for their defunct towing businesses.
Cardinalli’s A&R Towing operated out of Hollister under a number of different names until about 2004, the same year Greer’s B&C Towing, of Gilroy, was fired by the California Highway Patrol for what it deemed as business practices bordering on “criminal.”
Cardinalli and Greer – formerly Vincent Bruce Cardinalli Jr. – turned their former towing businesses into a legal gold mine, collectively filing nearly 2,000 cases in small claims courts over the past seven years in San Benito and Santa Clara counties, according to records.
“The suspects are believed to have operated a small claims lawsuit mill in at least two counties involving hundreds of small claims actions,” according to an arrest warrant filed by Gilbert Vizzusi, the district attorney’s lead investigator in the case. “Greer and Cardinalli … tricked small claims judges into awarding judgments (collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars) … based on false documents,” among other things.
Neither Cardinalli nor Greer could be reached for comment before press time, though Greer previously has denied responsibility for a trail of suspect documents that have cropped up in his cases. Records showed that a court summons was delivered to an empty apartment and that a court order to levy a bank account was altered.
Vizzusi’s affidavit points to Hollister landscaper Efreen Gonzalez as a case study in Cardinalli and Greer’s efforts to “cheat and defraud victims.”
Gonzalez had his bank account raided for nearly $4,000 by Greer, records showed. Sworn legal documents filed by Greer suggest Gonzalez received a court summons at his home, but the apartment was vacant when the papers purportedly were delivered.
“Right now, I’m kind of surprised that all these things went through and they got arrested,” Gonzalez said Wednesday. “I’m glad they got caught for what they were doing. It needed to happen. Clearly they were doing fraud, but none of the small claims courts were doing anything about it.”
Greg Adler, an attorney for Copart Inc., a Fairfield auto salvage company that has fended off three Greer suits, first alerted the district attorney’s office to Cardinalli and Greer’s business practices. In April, Adler helped convince a San Martin superior court judge to dub Greer a vexatious litigant, crippling the tow truck operator’s ability to file new cases. Adler recently helped another defendant file a similar case against Cardinalli.
“Over the past year and a half, I’ve done everything I can to stop this scam from continuing on the civil side,” Adler said. “It’s great to see that the district attorney’s office has picked up the ball and is running with it on the criminal side. Hopefully, this is the end of the road for these guys.”
On Wednesday, Cardinalli was arrested in Hollister and Greer was arrested at the Clovis office of Professional Collections Inc., the company he formed to collect on many of his towing debts.
In addition, a number of the charges extend to Greer’s sister, Rosemary Ball, her husband, Michael Ball, and process server Jeffrey Horan. District Attorney Dale Lohman, who led the investigation into the family’s towing businesses and small claims cases, would not say if the Balls or Horan have been arrested.
If convicted on all counts, Lohman said, jail time could reach 34 years for Cardinalli and more than 29 years for his son.
“We’re just starting the process, but I think it’s important to restore the public’s confidence in the judicial system,” Lohman said. “The court’s been very cooperative during the investigation of this case. In many ways, the court’s been victimized.”
