A private attorney has filed hundreds of lawsuits alleging Southern California immigration consultants are breaking the law. Some business owners say it's a…
A private lawyer appears to have collected more than $2.2 million by suing small businesses and accusing them of violating a state law. Many of the business owners say they've done nothing wrong, and some are fighting back in courtGlendale-based immigration consultant Zed Ziafathy told the NBC4 I-Team he was shocked when he found out he was being sued, not by one of his former clients, but by a corporation he'd never heard of.
The I-Team has found more than 300 nearly identical lawsuits filed against immigration consultants across Southern California, and like Ziafathy's case, court records showed most of them were closed with a settlement payment.“He's using the judiciary as a gun towards the people,” said Shafi Afridi, an immigration consultant based in Orange County who's being sued by the same lawyer who filed the cases against Ziafathy and the others.
The I-Team talked with more than a dozen immigration consultants who've been sued, including Linda Young, who said she's been registered to work as an immigration consultant since 1987 and serves many people who speak Mandarin and Cantonese from her office in Alhambra.Young said she paid $12,000 to settle the lawsuit filed against her several years ago, even though she said she could prove she never violated the law.Ann L.
The lawyer filing all of these cases is Sebastien Medvei, who told the I-Team that he doesn't need to show evidence of wrongdoing to begin to take legal action. “So there are victims everywhere. The problem is they're most of the time afraid to come forward,” Medvei told the I-Team. Public court records of settlements in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties show Medvei has collected at least $2,262,491 from the lawsuits he filed against immigration consultants, a number Medvei declined to confirm.He said what he's doing is legal, justified and ethical, and told the I-Team he would gladly drop any of the lawsuits if the consultants could simply show him they were following the law.
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