OUR JUDGE, MELANIE DEFOREST, IS A FRAUD

“MARICOPA JUDGE DROPS ELECTION CAMPAIGN AMID SCRUTINY”

ARIZONA REPUBLIC NEWSPAPER – 10/7/12

The ARIZONA REPUBLIC NEWSPAPER revealed in the 10/07/12 article “Maricopa Judge Drops Election Campaign Amid Scrutiny” that Maricopa County Justice of the Peace has withdrawn from her Arrowhead Court Election campaign. It was discovered that Deforest does not have the college degrees she claims and that she embellished her previous job experiences. Deforest does not have her University of Utah bachelor’s degree and Arizona State University master’s degrees in criminal justice. Deforest withdrew from the JP race and stated: “I cannot provide (college transcripts) in a timely manner and I would rather focus more on my family than politics at this time.”  The universities have verified that Deforest does not have the degrees she claims. The Maricopa County Justice Court and Maricopa County Supervisors did not verify her past job and academic credentials. Lester Rosen, chief executive of Employment Screening Resources of San Francisco stated: “If job seekers are dishonest as they seek work, there’s a possibility that same characteristic would surface as an employee.” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors spokesman Richard de Uriarte stated: “It is disappointing that in her subsequent comments that she might have inflated her credentials. All you have in this life is your word.” Melanie Deforest stated she plans to remain until another justice of the peace takes office and then she will return to Utah with her children and family. On 10/05/12, Maricopa County Officials removed Deforest’s biography from the county justice court website.

 http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/20120928maricopa-judge-drops-election-campaign.html

 Melanie Deforest needs to be immediately removed from her JP position and prosecuted for fraud. All her decisions need to be reviewed. We were subject to her incompetence in our 7/8/10 trial. We sued our former landlord, Sun Grove Resort Village, to recover illegally collected service dog fees, loss of our apartment upgrades, a stolen countertop from our rental home, and the penalty allowed by law for withholding essential services. Sun Grove countersued us for the non-payment of rent and Contractual Interference. We lost and Sun Grove won. We now have $18,000 of wrongful judgments for baseless lawsuits from Arrowhead Court.

 Deforest was grossly biased to the Sun Grove lawyer, Scott E. Williams, who is also a part-time JP Judge in the East Mesa JP Court. Mr. Williams was representing returning JP judge Lex Anderson on an election issue at the same time of our trial. Deforest refused our motion for a change to an impartial venue and refused to allow us to have a jury trial. Deforest threw out our evidence even through the police requested us not to disclose it until pretrial, which never occurred, even when the court clerk said that was no problem. Deforest failed to understand the lawsuit, refused to allow us to cross examine a witness who was threatening to kill us, refused to delay the trial when our witness was in a coma in the hospital, and failed to follow proper courtroom procedures and protocols. Deforest ruled against us and even awarded Sun Grove a double satisfaction judgment on a baseless lawsuit. All Appeals and a Fraud of the Court Motion have failed since the court lost or destroyed the only trial recording. Our 9/9/10 Complaint to the Commission on Judicial Conduct concerning Deforest’s incompetence, biasness, and rudeness was dismissed.

 Our former landlord, Scott Green, falsely advertised that the senior living facility was a licensed assisted living facility with a nurse but that was all untrue. The Arizona Department of Nursing had cited Claudia Marquez as an imposter nurse on 5/25/05 but she still illegally operates at Sun Grove as a nurse. Scott Green sued the residents that moved when they discovered the senior living facility could not deliver the advertised medical services. We know of ten baseless lawsuits in the Arrowhead Justice Court where Sun Grove sued their former residents and received nearly $100,000 in wrongful judgments. It has been just discovered that Sun Grove’s manager, Scott Green, is a Medicare Fraud Felon who pled guilty in 2005 in Boston Federal Court. Mr. Green filed over 2,600 false Medicare claims for services that were not provided, which totaled over $70,000. Mr. Green continued to defraud seniors at Sun Grove for eight years with false advertising and baseless lawsuits. Arrowhead Court allowed the misuse of the judicial system as a court sanctioned senior financial exploitation scam in order to provide operating funds to Sun Grove. The 19 owners of Sun Grove purchased the senior living property in 2006 as an investment property but they lost their $4.5 million investment since it was part of the Oakdale Heights/AREI Ponzi scam. The owners do anything to keep the senior living facility funded so that they can sell the property in order to recover some of their losses. Deforest did not understand Sun Grove’s history and refused it to be presented in our opening statement. Justice died in Deforest’s courtroom.

 The tragedy of the story is that Deforest ruined our credit and cost us money, effort, and time fighting baseless lawsuits from a crooked landlord. We don’t have much time since the toxic mold in our Sun Grove apartment, which Scott Green refused to fix, has started the rejection of my wife’s transplanted liver. She will die of liver rejection caused by the toxic mold like our three dogs died of the same thing. Carol’s last wish is to protect other seniors from elder abuse and senior financial exploitation so we are teaching HELP STOP SENIOR FINANCIAL EXPLOITATION at PORA Adult Learning on 10/22/12. Carol wants to protect seniors from what happened to us. We are presenting 15 tips on how to protect yourself from elder abuse and financial exploitation. The answer to stopping elder abuse is education and prevention. We are having our lawmakers come to class since we are presenting 14 new Arizona senior protection laws. One of the laws we are requesting is to require a Justice of the Peace to be a lawyer, which is now in 33 other states. Deforest is the poster-girl why this law needs to be in place. Deforest was unqualified to be a JP, she was an aerobics instructor, and she was given the part-time JP judge job as a political gift because her policeman husband was shot on the job. It is time for Arizona to join the 21^st Century with qualified JPs and to end the present “Good-Old-Boy” reward Justice of the Peace system.