A family of tow truck operators with Hollister ties accused of
using local courts to defraud hundreds of motorists will face a
trial for the suspected crimes. Vincent Cardinalli Sr., 66; Paul
Greer, 32, formerly Vincent Cardinalli Jr.; Cardinalli’s daughter,
Rosemary Ball, 34; and her husband, Michael Ball, 39, will stand
trial for 158 counts of conspiracy, forgery, perjury, attempted
grand theft and other felony charges.
A family of tow-truck operators with Hollister ties accused of using local courts to defraud hundreds of motorists will face a trial for the suspected crimes.
“I’m very pleased,” said Deputy District Attorney Dale Lohman outside the courtroom minutes after Superior Court Judge Gilbert Brown announced his decision to hold the family over for trial.
Vincent Cardinalli Sr., 66; Paul Greer, 32, formerly Vincent Cardinalli Jr.; Cardinalli’s daughter, Rosemary Ball, 34; and her husband, Michael Ball, 39, will stand trial for 158 counts of conspiracy, forgery, perjury, attempted grand theft and other felony charges.
“I’m not upset about these,” Lohman said of the eight dropped charges – the majority of which were for alleged perjury – against Greer. “You pick your battles.”
Greer’s attorney, Eben Kurtzman, said the dropped charges “probably aren’t going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.”
With more than 100 counts against his client alone, Kurtzman said he expected Greer to be held over for trial.
“If you throw enough money against the wall, something’s going to stick,” he said.
According to the closing brief Lohman filed with the court, Greer’s and Cardinalli’s towing companies were effectively put out of business when the California Highway Patrol removed father and son from its list of approved towing companies in September 2004.
“As a result, Greer and Cardinalli needed a new way of making money, and therefore turned their former towing businesses into a lucrative shakedown scheme in which innocent people were sued for fraudulent deficiency claims in small claims court,” Lohman wrote.
Seated in a wheelchair apart from his children and their attorneys, the patriarch of the Cardinalli family bore little resemblance to the man who people called threatening as he allegedly scammed hundreds of people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wearing headphones to help him hear, Cardinalli penciled notes on a tablet during closing arguments, a wedding band on the fourth finger of the same hand he wrote with.
Cardinalli and Greer turned their flailing companies into a gold mine by filing hundreds of lawsuits in small claims courts on behalf of their various towing businesses and collection agencies, according to court documents. The duo cast a wide net, suing the owners of vehicles they towed, prior owners who had nothing to do with the vehicles at the time of the tow and people who had nothing to do with the towed vehicles whatsoever.
“Through fraud and deceit, the defendants used the courts to accomplish what they could not do on their own: get money from people who did not legally owe it,” Lohman wrote.
By falsifying documents they later used as evidence in small claims court, Cardinalli and Greer “tricked” judges into awarding judgments in their favor, prosecutors said. The first time some of the scheme’s targets ever heard of the tow truck operators was when they learned their bank accounts had been levied or their wages garnished.
A fifth defendant, process server Jeffrey Horan, who contributed to the scheme by providing false proofs of service, admitted to his participation in the case and pleaded no contest to one count of conspiracy to cheat and defraud and six counts of perjury last June. His sentencing is being postponed until the rest of the case is resolved.
Attorneys wrapped up the last day of the preliminary hearing with little oration. Only Tom Orvis, Michael Ball’s attorney, and Cardinalli, who represented himself for the preliminary hearing that began in mid-May, chose to expand verbally on their written briefs. Orvis challenged Lohman’s assertion that the defendants conspired to cheat and defraud victims and obstruct justice by asking the court to pinpoint the date when the defendants allegedly agreed to move forward with their scheme.
“To say my client had knowledge of and participated in a criminal conspiracy is absurd,” he said.
Cardinalli, who submitted an 80-plus page brief, claimed prosecutors exaggerated their figures and said his business was “far from being close to any kind of mill.”
Brown reminded Cardinalli that closing arguments were not the appropriate time to argue a point based on facts that were not introduced in court.
“I would urge you to get an attorney,” Brown told Cardinalli.
The family will be arraigned on 161 felony counts and one misdemeanor count 1:30 p.m. Aug. 17 in Department 24 at the Hall of Justice in San Jose. Based on the length of the preliminary hearing, attorneys estimated the trial could last up to four months. Kurtzman expected the trial to begin early next year. If Cardinalli heeds Brown’s advice and retains an attorney, the lawyer would need a substantial amount of time to sift through thousands of pages of evidence, Kurtzman said.
“This was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of evidence,” Lohman said of the file boxes that littered the empty courtroom. She planned to return to court later that afternoon with a palate to collect the remnants of the preliminary hearing.
