News correspondent Aitana Vargas seeks over $23K in attorney’s fees following her successful anti-SLAPP motion to strike Oshri’s frivolous case
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: On June 22, 2021, Hadari Oshri –Marc Lubaszka’s business partner– filed a civil harassment restraining order (CHRO) against Investor News reporter Aitana Vargas to stop the publication of her investigative series “A Special Report: The Harrowing Impunity of White-Collar crime,” and any subsequent installments or future media coverage. On August 3, 2021, Vargas filed an anti-SLAPP motion to strike Oshri’s CHRO petition. In a hearing held on September 13, 2021, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Doreen Boxer granted Vargas’s anti-SLAPP motion and denied Oshri’s civil harassment petition for failure to sustain the applicable burden of proof. Oshri will now have to pay Vargas’s attorney’s fees for filing a frivolous case. The Israeli entrepreneur also declined to go on a recorded interview or provide statements via email. This outlet has striven to reach out to sources to ensure they have the opportunity to provide their own account of events.
Los Angeles (CA) – Filing meritless legal actions can be costly, particularly when the petitioner is trying to silence freedom of speech on an issue of public interest and is unable to prevail on her claims.
And now Hadari Oshri is about to know why.
According to documents filed with the court today, Aitana Vargas seeks over $23,000 in attorney’s fees following her successful anti-SLAPP motion, which was granted by Judge Doreen Boxer in a hearing held in the Los Angeles Superior Court on September 13, 2021.
Hadari Oshri files poorly-written and incomprehensible statements with the courts
At the motion hearing, the judge stated that Oshri’s written petition for a civil harassment restraining order (CHRO) was confusing and that she had not produced admissible “evidence” to obtain injunctive relief against the journalist.
In her poorly-written CHRO petition dated June 22, 2021, Oshri referred to the award-winning news correspondent as “Mis Vergas” (My Dicks), accused her of being both “a very dangerous woman” and a “corrupted reporter” without any proof, and even identified Vargas as a member of the non-existent Spanish “race.” But Oshri’s declaration also featured other puzzling –yet memorable– statements, including the following:
- “(Vargas) is digging in places that are not here !! she is not AUTHENTIC, SHE IS NOT THE FBI OR THE CIA, that she can stock me like that on all my social media accounts, stock my online articles, and contact everyone involved !!!”
- “Mis Vergas (My Dicks) is so dangerous, that she is speaking about the situation publicly on here FB, and claiming that she is a SLAPP and by law she is protected, Mis Vargas is not the FBI and not the CIA, here stories about me are lyes, and she has no reason to contact anyone on my network.”
- “Aitaina Vergas (Aitaina Dicks) is a corrupted journalist, she is not authentic, SHE MUST BE STOPPED NOW!!!”
- “A quick look on here very recent Facebook page posting can be an avoidance for here thought process and here urgency.”
- “My attorney sent her a seance and desist, and she kept going.”
- “Stop writing about me and contacting my network! Suspension of her journalist license so she can’t do this to anyone else!!”
Hadari Oshri’s filing came after Vargas refused to take down her investigative series
Court documents –and other records– show that since February this year, the news reporter has faced legal pressure aimed at preventing the publication of her exposé, first released on May 30, 2021.
On February 16, 2021, Oshri’s counsel, John Tamborelli, sent a 3-page cease-and-desist letter to one of Vargas’s sources, Fergal Furlong, who had shared with the journalist key information implicating Oshri in an alleged joint PPE scheme with Marc Lubaszka, court documents show.
The intimidating letter –which misspelled Furlong’s name multiple times and that he refused to sign– threatened legal action against both him and an “alleged reporter” that Tamborelli had spoken with if “she” published any information or statements from Furlong.
The “alleged reporter” that Tamborelli –undoubtedly– referred to in his cease-and-desist letter was Vargas, with whom he’d spoken for one minute one day prior, phone records show.
But a few days later –acting on Oshri’s instructions, as shown by several emails the entrepreneur sent to the reporter–, Tamborelli sent a second cease-and-desist email: This time to both Furlong and Vargas.
The journalist didn’t reply to Oshri’s email nor her attorney’s legal threats and refused to comply with their demands, including those that Tamborelli laid out in a June 2021 settlement agreement between Furlong and Oshri.
Page 3 of the settlement agreement contained a provision requiring that Vargas remove the first part of her exposé and any or all articles that she had posted related to Oshri, Tamborelli and/or Lubaszka.
The reporter, not a party to the agreement, refused to comply with the terms of the provision and reiterated that she would not be removing any reporting nor content from her social media accounts.
At the end of June, the National Writers Union sent a letter to Tamborelli demanding that he cease any further intimidation attempts towards the journalist.
“NWU takes every attempt to silence or threaten a journalist, specially a woman journalist, extremely seriously,” the letter said. “We would also point out that while any confidential source may retract their story at any time, even under coercion, they have no legal standing to demand that any article be taken down. We ask that you cease any further acts of intimidation against our member.”
On June 22, 2021, as Vargas was about to release the second part of her months-long investigative series on Oshri’s participation in a PPE scheme with Marc Lubaszka, Oshri took legal action against her.
Prior to Oshri’s CHRO petition against Vargas, the reporter had reiterated publicly –on social media– that she would not succumb to legal pressure from Oshri and Tamborelli nor stop working on her investigative series.
Hadari Oshri is no stranger to the legal system and lawsuits against her
The Israeli entrepreneur is not new to the legal system. She has faced multiple legal challenges in the past, and former associates who have gone on to obtain judgments against her are still trying to collect payments.
In 2019,entrepreneur Dan Weber filed a small claims court case against her, but the case was never heard because he was unable to serve legal documents on her and then they reached an agreement, according to multiple sources. She still has not paid off the debt. Oshri was also named as a defendant in a personal injury case filed in Los Angeles in 2020.
According to public records, Oshri is the managing director of Trade Safe Pro, LLC and former CEO of Xehar Inc., a fashion company that went under in 2018. She then partnered with gold coin broker Marc Lubaszka, who owes over $2M to former coin investors, has been investigated by the FBI, is the CEO of private jet company Fly Private X and is selling gold again through Buy Gold Brightly.
Hadari Oshri and Marc Lubaszka’s elaborate PPE scheme will be exposed publicly
The next installments of Vargas’s investigative series exposing Oshri’s and Lubaszka’s PPE scheme will be released in the next weeks.
The news reporter is represented by civil attorney and US Veteran Michael Creamer, with offices in Orange County.
Since July 2021, Oshri is represented by criminal defense attorneys Veronica Barton and Paul Adkins, with offices across Los Angeles and Orange County.
*This story is being updated as more information becomes available. Last update: April 2, 2022.
Have you been SLAPPED? Contact the newsroom at info@investornews.io and share your story with us.
RELATED COVERAGE
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