In April, the Daily Mail described Paul Barresi as a “notorious private investigator” who had been hired by Amber Heard to dig up dirt on her ex-husband Johnny Depp. According to that story, Heard’s request backfired when Barresi not only couldn’t find anyone with a bad word to say about the Pirates of the Caribbean actor, but then he also went public with it.
Hollywood ‘fixer’ Paul Barresi says he was hired by Heard’s legal team last summer to find people who had been verbally or physically abused by Depp and be star witnesses in the upcoming defamation cases in the UK and US.
Barresi, who has worked for the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Murphy, explained he was hired to look into Depp’s ‘follies and vices’ dating as far back as the actor’s Viper Room days, which he co-owned in the 1990s.
But Barresi said he couldn’t find anyone who had a bad word to say against Depp, 56, even after interviewing over 100 people across the US and Europe who had worked with Depp on films dating back 30 years.
Over the years, Barresi has been involved in a number of high-profile Hollywood kerfuffles, and we’ve mentioned him here at the Underground Bunker in the past: We credited him with bringing us one of our all-time strangest stories, about Michael Jackson and his close personal friend, porn director Marc Schaffel. Currently, the 71-year-old US Air Force veteran is assisting the Ventura Police Department with its investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Johnny Depp’s former business partner, Anthony Fox.
And now Barresi has surprised us again, but this time with something that’s just flat-out bizarre. He’s filed a lawsuit against Trader Joe’s.
According to the lawsuit filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court, in December Barresi was shopping at a Trader Joe’s store in Rancho Cucamonga, where he lives, when he and another customer, an elderly woman, accidentally bumped into each other.
After making sure the woman was OK, the two of them wished each other happy holidays and were about to continue shopping. But that’s when something really strange happened.
According to the lawsuit, a Trader Joe’s employee approached Barresi and said to him, “Faggot, I bet you would not talk to a real man that way.” He then ordered Barresi out of the store.
When Barresi refused to leave, the employee then allegedly grabbed Barresi’s arms and shoved him, saying, “You need to leave now, old man.” The employee then turned to the store’s assistant manager, Luke Saito, and said, “Hey Luke, come help me throw this old faggot out of here.”
Barresi is apparently so upset about how he was treated, he’s suing with the help of attorney Ritchie M. Lewis.
“We know that the employee was terminated right after this incident,” says Lewis, who tells us that he and Barresi are waiting for a legal response to the lawsuit from Trader Joe’s attorneys.
We put in a request for comment with the grocery company, and we’ll let you know if they get back to us.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on August 6, 2020 at 10:00
