This guy and his partner, Julie Montante, are scam artists! Michael is an ex-con with a record for armed burglary and spent 10 years in prison. While in prison, Michael studied law and became a paralegal in the state of California when he got out. He couldn't become an attorney because he is a felon. What Michael and Julie do together is they lure unsuspecting people into their web by befriending them; they offer to set them up in business (they are "silent" partners) which is a scam in itself as they want total control of the business only your name is the only one that appears on the business license. They insist nothing leads back to their names due to IRS responsibilities. They refuse to sign any business agreements as they want everything to be verbal. After several months of being in business, they decide not to finance the business any longer and the business is left floundering.
Several months pass and the business ends up closing down for two reasons: No written agreement will be given; and no money being put into their business. Only thing is, it's not really their business because their name isn't on any paperwork making it look like it's only your business and they "invested" cash with you.
They then file civil lawsuits and state you committed fraud by taking cash money from them, mind you, there is no paperwork leading back to this supposedly "borrowed money"; sure they come up with their own accounting of dollars but no solid proof or paper trail that indicates this amount of money was "borrowed" or "given" to the business.
Once the lawsuit is filed, a lawyer has to be hired by the other party, mind you, Michael Petersen is a paralegal who works for a law firm in the Palm Desert area and has free access to attorney's as well as the courts. He inundates the other attorney with frivolous paperwork, racking up enormous sums of money to the unsuspecting party. This will go on and on, serving papers to individuals who had/have nothing to do with the case. Once this is realized, attorney for business is fired and business becomes pro per. This is when all faxing, phone calls, harrassments stop. The case then gets dismissed because they never show up for another court hearing!
They don't drop the case, they just stop showing up to scheduled court hearings.
Whatever you do, if anyone by the name of Michael Petersen or Julie Montante approaches you to open a business, run away as fast as you can. You will regret ever having known these crooks who are still operating in the Palm Desert, CA area. Their goal is to win these fraudulent cases to get large sums of money from you, money that you never received from them in the first place! They will try to ruin your life, they get pleasure out of this.
Julie has a landscaping business with an expired business license; She also has another business called Ace Laminate Security; she is the person who gets these people and then Michael enters the picture as "her attorney". Of course when this fact is brought up in court, he venomously denies it. How these two have gotten away with this for so long is beyond me.
They have filed so many lawsuits against people, businesses, the like just go into the Riverside CA Court system website under Indio Civil Cases and type in their names. You will see everything said here is not a lie. |
