Arrest Warrant Issued for Process Server

LAS VEGAS -- An arrest warrant has been issued for a process server accused of falsifying paperwork in dozens of cases and potentially hundreds more, in what police called a scheme to defraud the courts.

Former Las Vegas Metro police officer Maurice Carroll is wanted by police for 35 counts of perjury, false filing of paperwork and obtaining money under false pretenses. Metro says he said he served people with legal papers, but didn't.

Carroll runs On Scene Mediations out of a North Las Vegas home. The criminal complaint said he admitted to officers he lied on affidavits and falsified work. That has caused problems in an unknown number of cases at the Regional Justice Center and potentially in District Court.

Defendants lost cases because they had not been notified could try to overturn judgments.

One of those already going through that trouble is Alan Wood. He's racked up $20,000 fighting what amounted to be a $700 charge for a medical bill. All it seems because of improper paperwork.

The fallout even reached his work. "My payroll department called me one day and said, 'Hey, you know, we just got a judgment and a garnishment against you,' and I said, 'That's impossible. I've never been to court,'" he said.

These mistakes can continue until keen-eyed workers at the court sort through the hundreds of old and pending cases trying to see if Carroll's firm had anything to do with them.

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Process Server was Cited by State Investigators

State investigators in 2003 cited former Las Vegas police officer Maurice Carroll for operating as a process server without a license, but he did not appear on their radar again until a couple of months ago, when justices of the peace complained about his activities.

Las Vegas police are now investigating allegations that Carroll's latest process serving company, On Scene Mediations, submitted false affidavits in justice courts around the valley, potentially disrupting the lives and finances of thousands of civil case defendants.

On Scene Mediations is alleged to have filed affidavits swearing that it served defendants with copies of lawsuits, but in many cases the lawsuits were not served, police said. That resulted in judgments of default against some defendants because they failed to respond to the lawsuits in a timely manner.

The company's clients include widely known payday loan and debt collecting firms.

Police suspect that Carroll, 42, who left the police department in 2000 after roughly 10 years on the job, has been an unlicensed process server since 2003, but they said they have yet to substantiate their suspicions.

Mechele Ray, executive director of the Nevada Private Investigators License Board, said agency investigators issued Carroll a $2,500 citation in late 2003 after receiving a complaint that he wasn't licensed. The citation, approved by board members in March 2004, ordered Carroll to stop doing business, she said.

But Ray acknowledged that the agency has no record of any other action against Carroll until the Las Vegas justices of the peace complained about him in May.

The board now has an ongoing investigation of Carroll, she said.

Court officials said they don't know the scope of the problems On Scene Mediations created for Southern Nevada's courts, but police estimated thousands of cases could be affected. Records show that Carroll's company, which was run out of his North Las Vegas home, was doing about $50,000 in business a month, police said.

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