The Wizard Of Cons Is Back!Part 4: Mike and The Bus He Throws People Under

Mike is your best friend when he needs you or you are giving him money.  After he no longer finds you useful, watch out!

I’ll get to his financial conquests, at the destruction of others, later. For now, I want to focus on his more recent ruination of people’s lives.  In spite of Mike’s personal attacks on me, please do not count me amongst those people who have suffered at Mike’s hands.  Mike’s schemes over the years, have gained me financial benefits (and still do today) and credibility I probably would otherwise have never have received. Hundreds of grateful emails, phone calls and tear stained letters have been my reward.  Relationships with government law and regulatory authorities have blossomed because of my work on bringing Mike and Harold to justice.  Best of all, Mike is terrified of me and to what or whom it is he will have to answer for next.  It shows in his writing.

There was his attorney, Sean Morrissey, who worked side by side with Mike at Principal Capital Group.  This was a kid Mike recruited straight out of law school, using his charm and ability to create illusions of grandeur.  Instead of going to work for a firm as an associate to learn the practice of law, like he should have, Sean decided to fast track his way to riches by going to work for Mike.  Along the way, he made undertakings with business and representations in courtrooms that quite frankly, should have got him disbarred.  I warned Sean on several occasions that Mike would ruin his chance at a successful career and he ignored me, even verbally attacking me in a courthouse.  At the end of the day, Sean expressed his regrets and hightailed back to his home State of Utah to escape the legacy of fraud he helped create at Principal Capital Group.

Then there’s Evan Ginsburg, Mike’s attorney in his criminal trial and the only lawyer he’s ever had that acted with so much as a modicum of professionalism and dignity.  Well with the exception of Derrick Smalls, who represented Mike for about 5 minutes before he figured out what he was getting himself into.

Evan is as sweet a guy as you’ll ever meet.  He represented Mike as a favor to his wife Shanney’s family whom Evan has known for years.  Evan worked his ass off trying to get Mike the best possible result on his criminal trial, but after all, Mike stole two cars and wrote oodles of bad checks with intent to defraud and without remorse, so he sealed his own fate.  Evan also sat with Mike’s mother-in-law, Leticia Gallegos, during my third party examination of her, in order to discover whether she was holding any of Mike’s assets.  Evan also represented Mike’s wife, Shanney, during her bankruptcy hearing.  At all times, Evan and I were on good and friendly terms.  There was no reason not to be. We were not adversaries, just on adverse sides.  It’s business.

Evan was so impressed with my resolve to hold Mike’s feet to the fire during my collection efforts, that he sold me a judgment he had against Attorney, Riordan Zavala.  Evan had no interest in pursuing Zavala, a brutish attorney, with a reputation for unethical behavior and unfounded pleadings.  Yes, kind of like Jehu Hand, except that maybe Jehu is more conniving than brutish.  I, on the other hand, have a reputation for being a bulldog and taking every pitch thrown at me.  I don’t care if it takes 10 days or 10 years. I always prevail, no matter what amount of paperwork, delays or intimidation tactics are thrown at me because my positions are always meritorious.  Mike, Jehu and Aniko (see Part 6), all equally unscrupulous, have discovered that I always come out on top and it is driving them crazy.

Evan did not hire me, as Mike claims.  I paid Evan money for the judgment.  There was nothing inappropriate, unethical or illegal about this business transaction.  In fact, Evan had expressed a hope that my collection on the Zavala judgment would cause me to ease up on my efforts against Michael.  Michael has actually acknowledged this to me in writing.  Furthermore, I purchased the judgment from Evan after Mike’s sentencing.  Nothing prevents Evan and I from doing business with the exception of any deal in which Mike and I are on adverse sides.  Evan is such a gentleman, that he isn’t even concerned with the fact that Mike threw him under the bus. I am proud to say that Evan and I remain on friendly terms.

Last year, Mike was able to convince Forex International Trading Corporation, a public company that was the subject of a pumpsanddumps.com article and whose insiders had been involved with an unrelated company which I had sued, that I was pumpsanddumps.com and vice versa.  Forex filed a lawsuit against me and pumpsanddumps for various ridiculous causes of action. Once I filed a motion to have the case dismissed, Forex abandoned the case, realizing they didn’t have a leg to stand on.  They now owe me over $21,000 in court awarded attorney’s fees and are about to get sued for malicious prosecution.  In an attempt to hide from my inevitable litigation, the officers of the company, whom are each personally liable to me, have all resigned and the company has reestablished phony headquarters in Israel.  All because they listened to the ramblings of a despicable little con artist named Mike Osborn.

Same goes for Christopher Laursen, who is a Defendant in my ongoing case against Cuba Beverage Company.  He listened to Mike, even going as far as letting Mike obtain an attorney for him to try and defend him.  That attorney, is Mike’s old partner-in-fraud, Jehu Hand, who counseled Laursen to first file a frivolous, and ultimately unsuccessful, motion to strike my complaint and then a frivolous countersuit which has since been dismissed by the court.  Jehu also conspired with Laursen to fake Laursen’s move to Minnesota, in order to deter my ability to depose him.  Once Mike and Jehu saw that things were going badly for Laursen, they abandoned him and Chris now owes me over $26,000 in attorney’s fees.  Contrary to Jehu’s coaching, Laursen will not be able to discharge his debts to me in bankruptcy, as they were incurred through fraud and frivolous court actions on his part.  The good news for Laursen is that after I’ve won my case against him for fraud, I’ve decided to take away his right to sue Jehu Hand for malpractice and do it myself, assuming that I haven’t collected on my debt by then.  Jehu, is also about to be served with a complaint for malicious prosecution, as it is his responsibility, as an attorney, to refrain from filing meritless lawsuits.

Cuba Beverage Company and its President, Alex Procopio, are also co-defendants in that lawsuit with Laursen.  They too suffered at the hands of Jehu, who offered to take up their defense for them at Mike’s behest, and then abandoned his clients once things started going badly for him and it appeared that he was personally going to suffer the wrath of the presiding judge on the case.  Perhaps most deceived was the perfectly lovely attorney, Catalina Leff, who claims to be out of her element in this case and says she was conned into temporarily representing Cuba Beverage.  She then signed a Substitution of Attorney form, handing the case over to Jehu, who conveniently kept the form in his pocket, until he could determine the direction of the case.  When things turned badly for him, he unethically walked away from his clients and because the Substitution was never filed, Cuba and Procopio will have a difficult time making a case for malpractice against him.  Difficult, but not impossible.

Jehu’s abandonment put Ms. Leff in a difficult position because she was still identified as attorney of record in a case she had no knowledge of and was facing an ex parte motion I brought to have the Defendants declared in default.  I appeared before the Judge and rather than making it easy on myself, I took Ms. Leff at her word and did the honorable thing by explaining the bind that she had been left in by Jehu.  Note to Jehu:  You probably don’t want to be appearing in a case in front of Judge Taylor again.  He reportedly has a long memory, a reputation for being a stickler for the rules and he did not seem too pleased with you.

Mike also attempted to gain credibility with the defendants in another case which was settled in my favor just this past week.  Mike even had his new partner-in-crime, Aniko Kaye, attempt to solicit those defendants into Michael’s confidence. Mike not only wanted to direct the company’s defense of the lawsuit, but also offered to provide consulting services with respect to the company’s status as a public company.  To their credit, they recognized the irrational approaches of Mike and Aniko and having looked into their respective backgrounds, decided to stay far away from them.  Because the recent settlement has an agreed confidentiality clause, insisted upon by the defendants, I will not be identifying them by name.

Let’s not forget Detroit restaurateur, Greg Gedda, who was easy prey to Mike’s charms and invested almost 1 million dollars in the Principal Capital Group scheme, easily its biggest funder. Mike embezzled every dime from that Ponzi-scheme.  Instead of filing a complaint for Mike’s unlicensed actions and fraud (something you can still do Greg), Greg bought into Mike’s stories and personally loaned him another $80,000.  Then in an attempt to get me off his back, Mike had Greg personally back a payoff agreement, which I then had to sue Mr. Gedda to enforce.  Mike has now conned at least $1.4 million out of Greg Gedda.  Here’s the best part.  Mike recently tried to get Greg to give him even more money, using the ruse of a planned lawsuit against me and my diligent attorney, David Harter, that required funding.  Greg, who showed the “proposed” pleading to my Detroit attorney commented to him, “Why would I even want to get involved in another project with Mr. Osborn or give him any more money and why would I try and go to court against George again?”

For the record, I tried to save Greg from himself and warned him early on that Mike was a con man and that Greg would never see his money again.  Unfortunately, those warnings fell on the deaf ears of a man who is easily conned because of his admirable, if not misguided, faith in his fellow man.

Very recently, Mike went shopping for a contributing writer on SeekingAlpha.com, offering $1,000 (which I promise would have never have been paid) to anybody who would write a defaming article about me and my ongoing litigation against Arena Pharmaceuticals.  Here are the contents from a series of December 15^th emails to me from Erik Gholtoghian, one of the contributors that Mike solicited:

“Basically, I don't know you at all. For all I know, you're a scumbag criminal, or maybe a saint. But recently, I was contacted anonymously by some people who offered me $1000 to write a character assassination article in relation to your lawsuit filed with ARNA Pharma. I declined, but somebody else took the offer and the article was posted briefly. Contact me.”

“Yes.  I'm not sure who contacted me, as the person kept their identity secret and was quite worried about you having evidence for litigation.

I may give you a call tomorrow to discuss.”

Mike did convince SeekingAlpha.com contributor, Brian Gorban, to publish a phony article about me in which he discredited my litigation against Arena, all the while forgetting to mention the 5 class action lawsuits that were also filed by major national law firms.  Within minutes, a link to that article appeared on the Abuse of Law blog.

Then I had a few words with Brian on the telephone, suggesting that the article was not in his best financial interests.  Within a couple of hours, Brian had realized that he had been taken for a ride by Mike and the article disappeared.  Brian then sent me an email thread between him and Mike, from which the content appears below.  Alan Zadeh, is a pseudonym that Brian Gorban uses.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Zadeh <azzadehca@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: Kontactr : Removal of link
To: submit@abuseoflaw.org

oh ok, sounds great Michael and wish you best on a great goal and purpose!

Best, Brian

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:59 AM, <submit@abuseoflaw.org> wrote:

This is Michael Osborn and although this site started out to take George down but since my getting involved it is about justice and stopping cyber-smearing as it is a growing problem for small and mid cap companies.

Sent via AbuseofLaw.org

---

From: Alan Zadeh <azzadehca@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:55:02 -0800

To: <submit@abuseoflaw.org>

Subject: Re: Kontactr : Removal of link

Yes, thank you for taking down as he was threatening to sue and this and that and actually wants a letter of apology, lol..is this Michael something (my apologies, can't remember the last name) as he says runs this site looking to get back at him and is he really just a person who works the legal system loopholes for his benefit as he has another lawsuit out? 

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:46 AM, <submit@abuseoflaw.org> wrote:

Well it was a very well written article. It is truly a sad event that Sharp is able to scare people to get his way. The post is taken down.

Sent via AbuseofLaw.org

---

From: Alan Zadeh <azzadehca@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:43:43 -0800

To: <submit@abuseoflaw.org>

Subject: Re: Kontactr : Removal of link

Appreciate that..Mr.Sharp contacted me personally and explained his side and as a third party I simply want to stay out of it if that's understandable? I'm just a very small free-lance writer trying to get by.

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:41 AM, <submit@abuseoflaw.org> wrote:

No problem. May I ask why you took it down?
------Original Message------
From: Brian
To: submit@abuseoflaw.org
ReplyTo: Brian
Subject: Kontactr : Removal of link
Sent: Dec 14, 2011 10:38 AM

Hello,

I wrote this article and had it deleted yesterday so the link doesn't
work..better to just kindly take down please.

Best,

Brian

Obviously, Mike has exposed Mr. Gorban and SeekingAlpha.com to litigation, which I am now considering filing.

I guess the bottom line is that Mike brings everyone who comes in contact with him down to his level and will take advantage of anyone and everyone in order to conduct his nefarious deeds.  He’ll even sell out his own wife, whom I predict will one day come to her senses, just like Mike’s previous two “wives” did.

In Shanney’s case, he had her submit to my demand to get her to undersign one of the many judgment payoff agreement’s that Michael breached.  I told him that there was no way I would go into this umpteenth agreement without Shanney’s acceptance of the debt as her own.  To my shock, he got her to agree to sign the document.  She was then forced to file for bankruptcy once Michael inevitably reneged.  In short, Michael caused the destruction of Shanney’s credit rating.

My former landlady, fraud artist, slumlord and Mike’s new pal, Aniko Kaye, doesn’t know it yet, but Mike has even thrown her under the bus, although she’s so self-destructive, that she really doesn’t need much more than a gentle push to get run over by that bus.  Aniko has already admitted under sworn testimony that she provided Michael with my credit reports that he published on his Abuse of Law blog.  In a few days, I will be seeking leave of the Federal Bankruptcy Court, to enable me to include Aniko as a defendant in an action against her, Mike and possibly Jehu Hand for Invasion of Privacy, Violations of the Fair Housing Act and Violations of the Fair Credit Act.  This litigation will only be part of the several court actions she is about to face, culminating with Federal charges of dozens of counts of criminal Bankruptcy Fraud, that will most certainly be brought by the court.  Mike likes to make hay of my legal name change in 1997 and yet fails to consider that his benefactor has banks accounts under at least 5 different names and has used that many different names when giving sworn testimony in my 4 year old case against her.  And yes, Mike, there is actual evidence and the court has it.  Hard evidence Mike.  Something you try and have the next time you make empty accusations.

return to michael-osborn.info