8 Aug 1st-Aug 7th, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | The complaint cited no police incident report numbers for either, though there is evidence both happened. Negrete claimed on his podcast that there were no calls for service to Rafi’s Arcadia home on or around the date of the supposed home invasion. Police records show otherwise. There were no calls for service from Rafi’s residence on the date the lawsuit gave for the home invasion, but there were three on Jan. 28. One was labeled as “burglary alarm,” and two subse- quent calls were categorized as requests for an estimated time of arrival for police. It’s not clear if emergency personnel responded to Rafi’s residence, and no inci- dent reports were filed regarding the event. Mohamed’s statement did not address a New Times question about the event. Speaking to New Times, Negrete said he requested the same police records New Times found but was told there weren’t any. “I didn’t mean to mislead,” Negrete said. “If there was a report, don’t take it as I didn’t tell anybody. I just was not told.” Still, as Negrete noted, nothing about those calls connects him to the incident. As for the bomb threat, which was submitted through the chat function on RLG’s website, police records explicitly identify someone other than Negrete as the culprit. Rafi’s lawsuit claims that Negrete, “either acting alone or in concert with others, made a false report to the police by threatening to bomb RLG’s Phoenix office.” However, according to the police incident report, the firm — particularly Letisha Ulibarri, an RLG employee listed as the complainant on the report — knew that to be false not long after the threat was made. The day of the threat, police traced its origin to a computer at Maryvale Preparatory Academy. Police informed Ulibarri of that information the same day, and she told police “she believed it was a student and that the threat was not likely credible,” according to the incident report. But Feb. 20, 11 days after the threat, Ulibarri contacted police to share the photos posted by @LawyerFiles, which she suggested might indicate the account owner’s involvement. That owner, she told police, could be Negrete. On Feb. 29, though, police determined the threat was a prank by a sixth-grader at Maryvale Prep. The student was suspended. “Rafi Law Group was notified of the findings and did not wish to further pursue prosecution,” the incident report concluded. Yet Rafi’s amended complaint — filed May 30, more than three months after police closed the bomb threat case — repeated the claim that Negrete was responsible, despite the fact that police determined otherwise. The statement provided to New Times by Mohamed did not address questions about the bomb threat and the police report. “This isn’t even immature,” Negrete ranted on his podcast. “This is criminal. This is a frivolous police report.” It also, he said, consti- tuted a viola- tion of Rule 11 of the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure, which requires that “factual contentions have eviden- tiary support.” “I’m going to the (state) bar,” Negrete said on the podcast. “I’m putting it on record, and I’m not going to rest until this man has some sort of punishment coming to him for the shit that he pulled on me and my family.” In the meantime, Negrete went on the attack. The feud deepens If Rafi has a bad reputation, Negrete said, it’s earned. The complaint in Rafi’s defamation suit took issue with claims made by @LawyerFiles that Rafi relied on his father for funding and that he is inexperienced. “RLG did not require any capital from this father, did not receive a ‘blank check’ or ‘free rent’ from his father,” the complaint read. “The gist of this allegation is to discredit Plaintiffs by making Rafi look incompetent and incapable of starting his own law firm.” The allegation that Rafi lacks experience “is also false,” the complaint added, “and portrays Rafi as an incompetent lawyer.” However, Negrete says both claims in the @LawyerFiles post hold water. Negrete said Rafi did get a leg up from his dad. While many of Negrete’s and @LawyerFiles’ claims about Rafi’s family backing are difficult to verify, one claim isn’t. Maricopa County Assessor’s Office records show that Rafi’s first law office located at 2235 N. 35th Ave. was owned by the lawyer’s father, Michael Rafi, prior to 2006. That year, Michael Rafi transferred ownership to 2235 Property LLC, which has owned it ever since. The LLC lists the elder Rafi as its statutory agent — on the affidavit of property value from the trans- action, Michael Rafi signed as both buyer and seller. Mohamed did not respond to a question about whether Rafi’s father financially backed the firm. The complaint does not directly refute the suggestion by @LawyerFiles — and parroted by Negrete on his podcast — that Rafi has never tried a case in court. “Rafi has personally handled thousands of cases himself,” the complaint said, though it did not say he handled them at trial. In his statement, Mohamed said Rafi “has been a practicing attorney since 2014 and has previously represented thousands of personal injury clients.” He did not address whether Rafi has trial experience. If Rafi is hunting for reputational harm, Negrete said, he should look no further than his firm’s own reviews. Roughly 240 of the more than 2,300 reviews of Rafi Law Group on Google rated the firm one star out of five. There are roughly three times as many five-star reviews as one-star reviews, though one five-star review insisted the firm “is really ZERO stars.” Additionally, there are three Rafi Law Group entries on Yelp, all of which have been “claimed” by the company, each with a rating of 2.3 or lower. On Glassdoor, where employees can rate their employers, the firm has a rating of 2.7 stars. In fact, one former employee is suing Rafi Law Group in federal court for retaliation. In a suit filed in December 2023, former Rafi Law Group receptionist Ditzha Flores claimed the firm fired her for reporting that an RLG attorney grabbed her inner thigh at a Christmas party in 2022. In court documents, the company claimed Flores did not report the alleged assault to anyone when it occurred and also that she had a history of “lying, excessive drinking, poor performance, and lack of accountability.” In February, RLG filed a counterclaim for abuse of process, denying that Flores was grabbed and “that any ‘unwelcome touching’ occurred.” In a letter to Flores’ attorney — which the attorney then attached as an exhibit to buttress her retali- ation complaint — a lawyer representing RLG threatened to file a $250,000 suit against her “for libel, slander, harassment, loss of business, damage of image, and damage of goodwill.” While Mohamed’s statement did not address the litigation with Flores, it did say “Arizonans choose Rafi Law Group more than any other law firm because of their results and excellent customer service. Over 40% of clients CALL RAFI because of posi- tive word-of-mouth recommendations from former clients and their friends and family.” Negrete addressed Flores’ lawsuit on his podcast, though he didn’t name her. He also didn’t disclose on the podcast that Flores has worked for him since leaving RLG, first at his now-defunct AZ Hometown Law Firm and currently as a legal assistant for Valley Injury Lawyers, a worker’s compen- sation firm Negrete partly owns. Speaking to New Times, Negrete said he omitted Flores’ name from his podcast “out of respect for her,” and that no connection should be drawn between her current employer and her lawsuit against her former one. “The fact that she has a lawsuit against Brandon, it’s not one and the same that she’s an employee of Valley Injury Lawyers,” Negrete said. But if Rafi wants to impugn Negrete’s credibility, the connection creates an opening. With Negrete, there are many others. More bulletproof? Near the end of his second Rafi-centric podcast episode, Negrete issued a bold challenge. “You could drum up all my skeletons, my guy,” Negrete said, addressing Rafi. “I’m more bulletproof than you.” At least one person is determined to test that theory. In April, an anonymous indi- vidual purchased the domain name WhoIsGilNegrete.com. The site went live sometime between then and July, seem- ingly dedicated to Negrete’s destruction. With cartoons and crude Photoshopped images of Negrete behind bars — as well as his actual mugshot from a 2011 arrest — the site said it aimed to inform the public about Negrete’s “criminal activities and unethical conduct.” It gave brief overviews of several state bar complaints and one criminal conviction against Negrete. All of it appears accurate, if less than thoroughly detailed. (Notably, while the state bar has come down on Negrete several times, it has no records of discipline against Rafi.) Negrete’s criminal conviction stemmed from that 2011 arrest. That year, Negrete was charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, two class 3 felonies that related to several cashier’s checks issued to pay a client’s $75,000 bail. Negrete pleaded down to facilitation to commit money laundering, a class 1 misdemeanor, and was sentenced to probation. In 2021, a complaint was filed to alert the state bar of Negrete’s conviction. For not following his duty to self-report the offense, the bar issued Negrete an On his podcast and in an interview with Phoenix New Times, Gil Negrete forcefully hit back at Brandon Rafi’s claims. Negrete also offered explanations for his own history of legal indiscretions. (Screenshot via Instagram) Lawyer Beef from p 6 >> p 10 “THIS ISN’T EVEN IMMATURE,” NEGRETE RANTED ON HIS PODCAST. “THIS IS CRIMINAL. THIS IS A FRIVOLOUS POLICE REPORT.”
