THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 7, 1996 TAG: 9603070425
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
The Jewish Mother had just opened for business. It was a sunny Saturday morning at the Oceanfront, with customers already seated at four tables.
Suddenly, 20 heavily armed law-enforcement agents, wearing flak jackets and accompanied by dogs, broke through the front door. The agents told the manager they were closing the restaurant.
Then the agents ordered the customers out, yanking forks out of the hands of dawdlers. They lined up everyone in the dining room and checked identifications.
It was a raid - a huge, simultaneous raid on two restaurants and two houses by agents of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The date was April 2, 1994.
The raids produced no criminal charges, even though the agents carted away, literally, a big truckload of records and equipment, and did not return the items for five months.
This week, the Jewish Mother, owners John Colaprete and Ted Bonk, former manager Scotty Miller and his family filed a $20 million civil rights lawsuit in Norfolk's federal court against agents of the IRS, ABC and other government agencies.
The lawsuit accuses the agents and the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach of assault, conducting illegal searches and seizures, and false imprisonment. It seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.
On Wednesday, both the IRS and the ABC declined to comment.
The 27-page lawsuit describes in detail how the four raids were conducted on the restaurants and the homes of Colaprete and Miller. In all four places, the raids were repeated with varying degrees of terror, according to the lawsuit:
In Virginia Beach, the raiders broke into a teenage girl's slumber party, rousted her father - Miller - from the shower at gunpoint, forced him to sit on a couch and prevented him from calling his lawyer.
Elsewhere in Virginia Beach, agents broke into Colaprete's house when he wasn't home, left the front door open, the home a wreck, the dogs missing.
In Norfolk, agents descended on a second Jewish Mother restaurant. There, they yelled at employees and customers that nobody was to leave the premises or touch anything. They seized every record and piece of business equipment in the place.
When the raids were over, the agents had seized a huge quantity of records and equipment, including cash registers, receipts, price lists, computers, calendars, Rolodexes, telephones, even a car license plate.
Five months later, a big yellow Ryder truck pulled up Pacific Avenue and returned everything to the Virginia Beach restaurant. There was no apology, just a statement that the investigation was over and there would be no charges.
Colaprete, Bonk and Miller say the raids were prompted by a disgruntled former employee named Deborah Shofner, who embezzled about $60,000 from the restaurants, got caught, was fired, then lied to the authorities in retaliation.
In the lawsuit, they say Shofner told agents tales of illegal drugs, guns, money laundering and ``Jamaican hit squads'' at the restaurants.
These stories, the lawsuit says, were ``patently outlandish and inherently implausible'' and ``played to racist fears.'' Yet agents ``made no effort to corroborate Deborah Shofner's improbable tales,'' despite the lack of any credible evidence backing them up.
The Jewish Mother has been open in Virginia Beach for 20 years without problems, the lawsuit says, and neither of the two owners, Colaprete or Bonk, has any criminal convictions.
Last year, the ABC held hearings to revoke the Jewish Mother's liquor license, but the charges were withdrawn and the restaurant agreed to pay a $5,000 fine for employing Miller, who has a felony conviction.
``The only result of the raids,'' the lawsuit says, ``was a trampling of the civil rights of the plaintiffs by the defendants' oppressive and illegal conduct.''
The lawsuit contains this description of the raid on Miller's house:
Miller was in the shower when he heard his 13-year-old son scream, ``Dad!'' Then he heard someone say, ``Mr. Miller.'' He pulled back the shower curtain to see a police officer pointing a gun at his head.
``What's going on?'' Miller asked.
``We have a search warrant for your house. Back up and finish taking your shower,'' the officer said.
Miller ``was scared out of his wits'' and was standing in the shower naked, the lawsuit says. ``Are you going to hand me a towel or do I have to drip dry?'' Miller asked. The agent handed him a towel.
He said he heard his son wailing downstairs, ``Are you going to take my father away?'' His wife was at the Virginia Beach restaurant, where another raid was taking place. His 15-year-old daughter was in the house with three friends at a sleep-over.
At least 15 armed agents roamed inside and outside the house with dogs, the lawsuit says. When Miller reached for a drawer to get underwear, the lawsuit says, two agents motioned in a threatening way with their guns and said, ``Don't touch that drawer.'' Someone handed Miller his underwear.
A few minutes later, the agents called the parents of the girls sleeping over and told them to come pick up their daughters.
The agents told Miller to sit on a couch, but Miller said, ``No, I'm fine. I'm not moving. I want to talk to my lawyer.''
``You can't make any phone calls,'' an agent said, according to the lawsuit. Two agents allegedly then grabbed Miller's arms and forced him to the couch.
``The armed agents literally ripped the Miller residence apart to find contraband,'' the lawsuit says. They stayed for seven hours. The agents also wrecked the two restaurants and Colaprete's house, according to the suit.
At Colaprete's house, agents seized a personal safe that contained, among other things, an Elgin watch that Colaprete got from his father, but was never returned, the lawsuit says.
Shofner later moved to North Carolina and was convicted there of embezzling from another employer. She now faces embezzlement and forgery charges in Virginia Beach from her work at the Jewish Mother. That trial is scheduled for April 3. ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTO
Confiscated materials were returned to the Jewish Mother - five
months after the raid.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT by CNB