Records sought in court scandal

Las Vegas police are expanding a criminal investigation into a process serving company at the center of a court scandal.

Officials with Rapid Cash, a Kansas-based payday loan company, confirmed that police last week requested records of its business dealings with On Scene Mediations dating to 2006.

"They asked us to cooperate and provide records, and that's what we're doing," said Chad Faulkner, president of Rapid Cash's Nevada operations.

Faulkner said from Wichita, Kan., that his company stopped doing business with On Scene Mediations after it learned about allegations the company was filing false affidavits of service in local justice courts.

"We are very shocked and surprised," Faulkner said. "It's not something we would ever condone."

The owner of On Scene Mediations, 41-year-old former Las Vegas police officer Maurice Carroll, and his office manager, Vilisia Coleman, have been charged with lying in sworn affidavits claiming to have served defendants with copies of court papers in lawsuits filed by the debt collection agency Richland Holdings.

The affidavits allowed Richland Holdings to obtain default judgments against the defendants after they failed to respond to the lawsuits.

Detectives are looking to corroborate allegations Carroll and his process servers also lied in court affidavits to bolster lawsuits filed by Rapid Cash, law enforcement sources said. No other On Scene Mediations process servers have been charged in the investigation.

Rapid Cash last week hired the Las Vegas law firm Gordon Silver to examine potential fallout from the scandal on the company, which has 16 payday loan stores in Las Vegas.

"Rapid Cash is a responsible member of this community," said Mark Dzarnoski, an attorney with Gordon Silver. "We're doing our own investigation to try to determine the scope of the problem."

Las Vegas Justice Court officials are gearing up to conduct a review of almost 20,000 default judgments that Rapid Cash and Richland Holdings have obtained since 2004. Officials want a hearing master to determine whether the rights of the defendants were violated when the judgments were entered.

On Friday, Assistant County Manager Jeff Wells told court officials that they could reclassify a vacant, already funded position as a temporary hearing master. That would eliminate the need for court officials to go before the County Commission on Sept. 7 and ask for $60,000 to fund a new hearing master position, Wells said in an e-mail.

Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa, who police have credited with helping uncover the scandal, said Monday that court officials have begun looking to fill the position.

Saragosa is set to hold the first of four hearings on Tuesday involving 68 applications for default judgments filed by Rapid Cash and Richland Holdings. She wants the companies to come to court prepared to back up affidavits of service submitted by Carroll and On Scene Mediations with additional evidence. The cases were filed in 2009 and 2010.

Carroll, who is free on $35,000 bond, has denied wrongdoing.

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Joe Bonaventure put off a preliminary hearing Monday on whether to bind Carroll over for trial in District Court. At the request of both sides, a new date was set for Sept. 14 .

Prosecutors have been presenting evidence against Carroll to a county grand jury to obtain an indictment and move the case directly to District Court.

Police interviewed Saragosa and another one of Bonaventure's fellow justices of the peace, Diana Sullivan, in their investigation, posing a potential conflict of interest for Bonaventure.

Witnesses provided by Carroll's lawyer, Craig Mueller, are set to testify before the grand jury today , a sign prosecutors are wrapping up their case.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135 or read more courts coverage at lvlegalnews.com.