Two new breaking reports today detail how Matt DePerno is a corrupt and unethical lawyer who cannot do the job of attorney general for the people of Michigan.
A bombshell report from Mother Jones detailed DePerno’s history of scamming clients and his aggressive tactics to collect legal fees.
Michigan Advance this morning detailed how DePerno’s corruption and lies are unprecedented, as he is under investigation by a special prosecutor.
An attorney general is supposed to uphold the law and protect Michiganders from corporate scammers and exploitation. On the contrary, DePerno’s record shows he’s exactly the kind of lawyer that Michigan needs protection from. He should not be Michigan’s top lawyer.
See below for more details on DePerno’s corruption and abusive legal practices towards his clients:
Mother Jones: Matt DePerno Sought to Foreclose on His Clients’ Property. Now He Wants to Be Michigan’s Top Lawyer
Emma Rindlisbacher
10/12/22
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If Matthew DePerno wins his race to unseat Michigan’s Democratic attorney general in November, he’ll become the state’s top lawyer. He will have a staff of more than 500 people, and his duties will include everything from investigating voter fraud to “protecting consumers and addressing illegal business practices.” But as a practicing attorney, DePerno—a vocal conspiracy theorist and election denier—has been accused of improper behavior in court documents filed by clients, a law firm he hired, and even the current AG. And a Mother Jones examination of years of legal filings involving DePerno suggests that he has routinely engaged in aggressive tactics to collect legal fees, while sometimes leaving his clients dissatisfied with the quality of his legal representation.
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DePerno himself appears to be in legal jeopardy related to the aftermath of the 2020 election. The office of the state’s incumbent AG—Democrat Dana Nessel—recently asked for a special prosecutor to investigate whether DePerno had participated in a scheme to illegally access voting machines in an effort to prove the race had been stolen from Trump. According to Nessel’s filing, a Republican state representative had told a county official that the legislature was conducting an investigation into voter fraud. Then, after gaining access to multiple tabulators used to count votes, “tests” were conducted on the equipment. DePerno had been present during those tests, the filing alleged, and he was “one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy.” A special prosecutor was ultimately appointed and has said that additional investigation is needed before he can make a determination on the case. In a statement, DePerno denied the allegations.
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Even before the 2020 election crisis, however, DePerno’s legal work had generated controversy. According to the New York Times, Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission has received at least five requests to investigate DePerno’s actions. DePerno told the Times that none of the complaints had resulted in disciplinary action and that “any person at any time can file any garbage they want” with the commission. In a letter to a law firm that had previously represented DePerno, DePerno acknowledged the existence of two specific grievance commission investigations, one of which related to his Antrim County litigation. DePerno’s letter, which was first reported by the Detroit News, called those probes “complete nonsense.”
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As a practicing tax attorney, Deperno has had a number of legal disputes with his own clients and other attorneys, and he’s faced complaints about his aggressive billing practices. In one instance, Ronald and Cathleen Moffit, a couple who were clients of DePerno, had seen a potential insurance payout reduced because of an outstanding debt to the IRS. The Moffits allegedly asked DePerno to “contact the IRS” to prevent their payment from being garnished, according to a request for investigation later filed with the grievance commission by William Buhl, a retired judge who was retained by the couple’s new lawyer to serve as an expert witness in a subsequent malpractice suit they filed against DePerno. Buhl alleged that DePerno had instead contacted the insurance company and had urged the couple to sue the insurance company.
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In the middle of legal proceedings with the insurance company, DePerno allegedly had the clients sign a new payment agreement, wherein their two properties would be held as collateral in the event that they didn’t pay their legal bills. Buhl said that he had “never seen” an arrangement like that before, according to Bridge Michigan.
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Ultimately, Buhl’s grievance filing alleges, the Moffits received less money from the insurance company than the insurance company had initially offered—and DePerno’s bill was more than the insurance payout. In attempting to collect the fees, DePerno allegedly foreclosed on the clients’ properties, the filing continued. One of the clients also alleged in a sworn affidavit that DePerno had grabbed him by the shirt, a claim that DePerno described to Bridge Michigan as “outrageous.” DePerno eventually reached a settlement with the Moffits in their malpractice suit.
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Legal experts told Mother Jones that while it isn’t necessarily improper for attorneys to ask for real estate collateral from their clients, it is fairly unusual.
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“Although lawyers can take security interests in clients’ property, not very many do,” said Peter Joy, a professor at the Washington University in St. Louis who studies legal ethics. “It seems like [DePerno] gets into these agreements after he’s already signed up the client, so that he’s already representing the client, he gets into the case, and now he pulls out the mortgage documents.”
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Typically, Joy said, if lawyers secure their legal fees using their clients’ property, they would have clients agree to the payment arrangement before taking on the client. “That gives the client an opportunity, free from there already being a fiduciary relationship…for the client to make a judgment about that, or maybe seek a second opinion.”
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The Moffits were not the only clients with whom DePerno used security agreements. In a different case, an outside law firm DePerno had hired sued him for allegedly failing to pay $15,985.20, plus other fees and interest, according to a complaint reviewed by Mother Jones. In his response to the complaint, DePerno alleged that “it is clear that [the law firm was] padding the bill. This is unethical.” He ultimately settled with the firm for $7,000.
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In a court filing in that case, DePerno stated that he had hired this firm to enforce a fee agreement against a group of clients and to foreclose on the clients’ properties. DePerno also appeared to be familiar with this type of security agreement, to the point where he claimed that his own firm, DePerno Law Office, had instructed the firm he’d hired as to how the clients would likely respond to these efforts.
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The complaints against DePerno don’t appear to have phased his biggest supporter, Trump. “He is really tough. And that’s just what you need,” the former president said at a rally. “He is a killer. We need a killer. And he’s a killer in honesty. He’s an honest, hard-working guy who is feared up here.”
Michigan Advance: Under criminal investigation, DePerno seeks to be the state’s chief law enforcement officer
Jon King
10/12/22
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It’s a situation unprecedented in Michigan political history: A candidate for statewide office is running under the possibility of being indicted by the very office that he’s seeking, with a vow to indict the current officeholder if he wins.
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The fact that the office in question also happens to be for attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of the state, only underscores the extraordinary nature of the contest.
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Such is the state of the Nov. 8 race between Matthew DePerno, the former President Donald Trump-endorsed Republican nominee, and Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel.
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Prior to the November 2020 election, DePerno was a Portage-based tax attorney best known as having represented former Republican state Rep. Todd Courser in a 2015 scandal where Courser tried to cover up his extramarital affair with fellow GOP Rep. Cindy Gamrat.
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That case ended with Courser pleading no contest to willful neglect of duty by a public officer and he and DePerno being ordered to pay nearly $80,000 in court-ordered sanctions in a failed defamation suit against the Detroit News for their coverage of the story.
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However, the Antrim County case was quickly amplified by Trump and his supporters to push the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged, an effort that culminated in the insurrection in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
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And while pro-Trump rioters were breaking into the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of electoral votes for President Joe Biden’s victory, DePerno was across town, meeting with former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Destro.
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The Washington Post reported that the meeting came “as Trump’s allies were pressing theories that election machines had been hacked by foreign powers and were angling for Trump to employ the vast powers of the national security establishment to seize voting machines or even rerun the election.”
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However, an investigative summary released by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office in August alleges that DePerno had instead engaged in criminal activity in violation of the law.
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The summary, written by Chief Deputy Attorney General Christina M. Grossi, was filed as part of a petition seeking to name a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that DePerno and eight others, including state Rep. Daire Rendon (R-Lake City) and Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, conspired to illegally obtain and tamper with voting tabulators.
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“When this investigation began there was not a conflict of interest,” stated the petition, which voluntarily removed Nessel’s office from the case. “However, during the course of the investigation, facts were developed that DePerno was one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy. A conflict arises when the prosecuting attorney has a personal interest (financial or emotional) in the litigation.”
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Despite openly bragging about gaining access to a voting tabulator after the 2020 election, DePerno has dismissed Nessel’s request for a special prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest as being politically motivated. He has also said she “should be impeached” over the investigation and repeatedly called for her to be imprisoned.
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