Portland Mercury | By Jonathan Bach | June 29, 2022
A private investigator trying to serve papers at a Beaverton Wells Fargo branch in April alleges a bank employee attacked him.
Mark Ososke, a state-certified PI who attempted to serve writ of garnishment papers at the Beaverton Town Square Wells Fargo, is suing the bank and an employee identified in his complaint as Marco Lara. He is seeking $25,000 and a jury trial, according to a lawsuit filed in Multnomah County on Tuesday.
Citing pending litigation, a bank spokesperson declined to comment beyond confirming Lara no longer worked at Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Lara could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if he had an attorney.
Ososke owns PI Services, LLC, an Oregon private investigation and process-serving company. On April 20, he went into the Beaverton bank branch at 11601 S.W. Beaverton Hillsdale Highway to serve garnishment papers for his client, a Portland musician who’d won a small claims case.
“After a person wins in small claims court they need to collect,” Ososke told the Business Journal on Tuesday. “The best way to collect on a judgment is to garnish the subject’s bank accounts or the subject’s employer.”
On jobs like this, Ososke tries to get the papers in the hands of a bank representative who knows what they are — typically a manager instead of a teller. He said he doesn’t usually have any problems at the branch in question because a manager or assistant manager is almost always there.
Ososke entered and saw an assistant manager busy with about six people, and he didn’t want to interrupt them. He said he stood in line for the teller window and saw a man “bouncing between a couple tellers, and I could tell he was helping them. So he seemed like the person in charge.”
When the man, Lara, came nearby, Ososke asked if he was in charge. Lara responded that he was. Ososke tried to leave the documents with Lara, but Lara refused them, according to the lawsuit.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna leave it here. And you can give me your name, or you cannot. I’ll just take a photo of you and do an affidavit for the court,'” Ososke said.
He pulled out his phone and started to put it up, but he said Lara grabbed it from his hand.
“My first reaction was just to reach forward, grab him and grab my phone. But that’s not the thing to do. So I just immediately got loud, because I figured he took my phone.”
He said Lara held the phone behind himself so he couldn’t grab it, while still facing him. Ososke demanded the phone back for what he estimates was 20 seconds.
He alleges he tried to reach around Lara to get his phone when Lara shoved him and said Ososke needed to take the papers. Ososke said he picked up the papers to try to de-escalate the situation, Lara gave him back his phone, and then Ososke put the papers down once again.
As he made for the exit, he had his left hand on a door handle. Suddenly he felt fingernails going down the back of his neck, he said, pulling his sweatshirt. The lawsuit claims Lara wrenched Ososke’s body backward.
“Apparently he was trying to stuff the documents with his other hand down the back of my neck in my clothing,” Ososke said.
He said another bank representative was also coming through the doorway with a “horrified look.” Ososke said he spun around and was upset but took a deep breath and left the bank. The other bank employee followed him and apologized profusely.
Someone called Beaverton police.
Officer Matt Henderson, Beaverton police spokesperson, described the incident that happened at noon on April 20 as a verbal and possibly physical altercation between two people.
“The officer had the opportunity and chose not to arrest anybody, and it has been referred to the city attorney’s office for potential prosecution,” Henderson said.
No charges related to the incident appeared in court records as of Tuesday.
Asked if he laid hands on Lara to defend himself at any point, Ososke said no but noted, “When he came up and pushed me, I put my arm at a 45 degree and just used my arm to kind of keep him off me. And I may have pushed off him,” He said he didn’t make contact with his hands.
Wells Fargo declined to say whether it had reviewed surveillance video from the time of the alleged incident or given that video to police for their review.
Run-ins with upset people have happened before in the course of Ososke’s work. He said he has had a gun and a knife pulled on him, and he’s been pushed before, but he doesn’t normally have issues serving papers in the corporate world.
As for what he’s hoping to get out of the lawsuit: “It’s about some awareness and some justice for the way they handled this,” he said.
He said no one ever contacted him to apologize or ask if he was OK. Still, he technically served the papers for his client.
“I submitted a proof of service to the court stating I served Marco Lara as the person in charge at the time of service at Wells Fargo,” he said.
The bank responded that no accounts were found, according to Ososke. Since then, however, the client garnished other banks to collect.
