6 Aug 1st-Aug 7th, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Lawyer Beef Feud explodes as ‘Call Rafi’ attorney accuses rival of bomb threat. BY ZACH BUCHANAN “I want to get some things off my chest right now.” On the 13th episode of his “Call Gil Show” podcast, Gil Negrete was about to go nuclear. To this point, everything about the podcast had been a warmup for the former personal injury lawyer. He’d spent the first episode explaining the suspension of his law license and how he went from slapping his face on billboards and buses to being unable to practice. With each subsequent episode, Negrete had loosened up, spilling secrets and gossip about the Valley’s community of personal injury attorneys. And he’d picked the 13th episode to take down one of the biggest of them all. Negrete was going after billboard staple Brandon Rafi. “Now the gloves come off,” Negrete said. “You got me, Brandon? The gloves are coming off now, my guy.” At issue was a lawsuit filed by Rafi that accused Negrete of defamation and much more. It claimed Negrete was behind an anonymous gossip Instagram account that had damaged Rafi’s reputation. It asserted that Negrete had organized a home inva- sion at Rafi’s residence. And, most egre- giously to Negrete, it accused him of calling in a fake bomb threat to Rafi’s office. All of it, Negrete told listeners, is “bullshit.” He would fight the suit in court, of course, but that would take time. Until then, Negrete would use his podcast to make Rafi pay. Over the next two episodes — titled “Negrete vs. Rafi” and “Negrete vs. Rafi II” — Negrete shared all the dirt he had on Rafi, one of the Valley’s most prominent personal injury attorneys. Negrete lambasted Rafi’s suit as frivolous, dissecting its shortcomings and unearthing what he said was exonerating evidence the suit ignored. He brought up a federal employment suit filed against Rafi’s firm, Rafi Law Group, by a former employee. Negrete didn’t stop there. Rafi, he said, is a “punk ass bitch” with no trial experience whose firm has poor reviews on online review sites. He also accused Rafi of being sensitive about his well-to-do upbringing and “rubbing elbows” with GOP extremists Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh. Once, they had been friends, Negrete said, but no longer. Rafi may be “on top of the world” now — billboards on every corner; a catchy “Call Rafi Rafi” jingle on the radio — but he’d “decided to fuck with the wrong one.” That “one” is Negrete, a non-practicing lawyer with a string of ethical and legal sanctions on his record who recently wrapped up a 15-month suspension. In a statement to Phoenix New Times, Raees Mohamed — the attorney repre- senting Rafi Law Group in the case — said the firm “is determined on addressing Mr. Negrete’s non-stop harassment, defama- tion, and deliberate dissemination of false information.” The statement did not address most of the 16 questions New Times sent to the firm. Negrete, however, was eager to unpack their feud in an interview. Over 80 minutes, Negrete answered questions about his career indiscretions and recapped his falling out with Rafi, the highly visible attorney Negrete said he’d once thought of as a brother. “Whatever you want to know,” Negrete said, “I’m going to tell you.” Until recently, their feud simmered under the surface. Now it’s out in the open, and Negrete is doubling down. From ‘brothers’ to enemies Years before Rafi accused Negrete of making a bomb threat, their relationship had begun to sour. Negrete said the two first met in 2014, just before Rafi opened Rafi Law Group. They bonded over a love of hip-hop and Phoenix, sitting together at Suns games and vacationing together in California. When Rafi Law Group’s business exploded, Rafi routinely referred cases to Negrete’s practice. Then in 2022, Negrete said, Rafi cut him off. At issue was one client, representing what Negrete said was only $5,000 in busi- ness, who signed with Rafi’s firm before switching to Negrete’s later the same day. Through a subordinate, Rafi demanded Negrete send the client back to RLG. Negrete said he tried to persuade her, but she did not want Rafi’s firm to handle her case. After that, Negrete said, RLG stopped sending cases his way. Negrete said he objected to how the younger lawyers at Rafi Law Group talked down to him. “I’m being scolded like I was a little kid,” said Negrete, who is 47. “And I’m not a little kid.” The statement from RLG’s attorney did not address New Times’ question about Rafi’s relationship with Negrete before the lawsuit between them. Over the next two years, Negrete said he and Rafi maintained a cordial relationship punctuated by periodic “tiffs.” Negrete hired lawyers away from RLG. Someone close to Negrete — one of many people he identifies as “Public Enemy No. 1,” a title for which there apparently is a multiway tie — gossipped to Rafi about him. But the bomb threat allegation kicked the feud into a high gear. The threat did happen. On Feb. 9 of this year, a bomb threat was made at the offices of Rafi Law Group at 24th Street and Highland Avenue. As a horde of police responded and poured into the building, someone was outside taking photos. Those photos were shared on the Instagram account @LawyerFiles, an attorney gossip account with more than 62,000 followers that has since been set to private. The account claimed, erroneously, that police were raiding the firm and that RLG’s attorneys had been drinking. RLG wasn’t a new target. In September 2023, @LawyerFiles had authored a long post criticizing Rafi as inexperienced and bank- rolled by his father. Five days after the bomb threat, attorney Raeesabbas Mohamed filed a defamation suit on behalf of Rafi and RLG claiming the posts were defamatory “and specifically designed to inflict maximum reputational harm.” The complaint also claimed that whoever was behind the account was responsible for the bomb threat and “arranging (a) home invasion” at Rafi’s residence two weeks earlier, on Jan. 27. But without an identifiable defen- dant to serve, the complaint sat in the court system until late May. That’s when Mohamed amended the suit to name Negrete as a defendant. It was Negrete behind the Instagram account, the suit now claimed, and Negrete who’d called in the bomb threat and organized a home invasion. Negrete was served with the suit June 18. A week later, he responded on his podcast. “This is a public lawsuit that you filed against me, and you’re saying that I called in a bomb threat to your office?” Negrete said on the podcast. “You punk ass bitch.” On the podcast, Negrete said the suit has several deficiencies. The @LawyerFiles posts might have sounded like him — “It matches my opinion, for sure,” Negrete said — but it provides no documentation connecting Negrete to the account. The court has cleared Mohamed to subpoena Instagram to uncover its owner, but it’s unclear if any subpoena has been issued. The suit’s amended complaint makes no mention of it, and Mohamed did not answer a question from New Times about it. Negrete said whatever that subpoena uncovers won’t be him. Negrete told New Times he does not own the account, though he knows who does. “Today, it’s not me,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be me tomorrow, though.” Asked to clarify, Negrete said — tongue-in-cheek, he noted — that he might buy the account to further antagonize Rafi. Also absent from the complaint was any evidence connecting Negrete to the home invasion or bomb threat. The feud between personal injury lawyers Brandon Rafi and Gil Negrete has involved a defamation lawsuit, a gossip Instagram account and a bomb threat allegation. (Graphic by Emma Randall) | NEWS | >> p 8
