New charges brought in alleged fake attack case

A federal grand jury added new charges on Wednesday against a woman accused of staging an attack to bolster a civil lawsuit and the man she allegedly hired to carry out the attack.

In a federal complaint filed last month, Julie Bernet, 39, and Gordon Reabe Jr., 51, were charged with wire fraud. According to Wednesday’s indictment, which replaces the original complaint, Bernet and Reabe are also charged with conspiracy to defraud Bernet’s former employer, Mercedes Benz of Kansas City.

Bernet and another woman, Lindsey Crawford, 23, filed a civil lawsuit in March 2008 in Jackson County Circuit Court, alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation by the car dealership. Federal authorities say Crawford and Bernet hired Reabe to physically attack them and sexually assault Crawford in a garage in Kansas City’s Waldo neighborhood in November.

Allegedly the assault was intended to appear as retaliation for the lawsuit by the former employer, in order to force a larger settlement. The women allegedly told Reabe that he would receive $100,000 if the settlement was more than $1.5 million, according to federal court papers.

Crawford has not been charged with anything.

J.R. Hobbs, of Wyrsch Hobbs & Mirakian, is representing Bernet. He said Wednesday afternoon that he had not yet seen the grand jury indictment, and that he was evaluating the formal charges and the evidence.

Reabe is represented by Brian Gaddy, of Gaddy Geiger & Brown. He declined to comment.

The underlying lawsuit is ongoing. Bernet and Crawford’s lawyers withdrew from the case after the women were arrested in December. Bernet is now represented by Kirk Holman, of Holman Schiavone. The week after the original federal complaint was made public on Jan. 22, Holman filed a motion to sever his client’s case from Bernet’s.

The case names the Soave Automotive Group, which is the Mercedes
dealership’s parent company.

“We are grateful to law enforcement for continuing to pursue this deeply disturbing criminal scheme,” Marion Battaglia, president of Soave, said in a written statement. “We are confident in the judicial process, and we look forward to a swift resolution of these matters.”

The wire fraud charge stems from an incident following the alleged assault in which Bernet, who lives in Bucyrus, Kan., made a call across the state line to a Kansas City police officer to report that a man had threatened her life. The threatening call was allegedly intended to have come from Aristocrat Motors, another Soave-owned company. However, police traced it to a cell phone owned by Reabe’s neighbor, whom Reabe allegedly hired to go to Aristocrat to make the call from the dealer’s courtesy phone.