This guy is an idiot. FIGHT HIS LAWSUITS, he is only out to get easy defaults. I sure hope you take him down!! He is breaking the law, taking advantage of the court system (do some research, he files fee waivers on ALL his cases), and I would love to nail this man to the wall. Bottom feeding scumbag! I would be interested in how your proceedings go.
First, I need to start with a rather lengthy disclaimer that I can't give you legal advice for California, and you should generally distrust anything called or masquerading as "legal advice" over the Internet, especially free advice from anonymous individuals. That kind of advice is worth every penny you pay for it -- i.e., nothing. The only reason for trusting anything that I say is that, when I say anything important, I back it up with third-party sources that you can then check out yourself and judge for yourself whether they are trustworthy. But applying the law to a particularlized set of facts is the same as practicing law, and I do not want to be accused of practicing law without a license in California.
You also do not give enough facts in your post to allow a lawyer to help you effectively. For example, was your summons served on you in California? Do you live in California? Is Riverside County the correct venue for the case? If you don't file this in your initial answer when it is due, you may waive important defenses or at least make your life much harder by having to defend yourself in a court far away from your home.
There is also the fact that in California, most of the case details are not available on-line. It also costs money to search records on line for cases filed by Recovery Solutions (or by any other name). Searching by the number of the case may be free at the site listed immediately below (but you didn't give your case number). Searching by number may (or may not) confirm that there is a real case pending against you, but someone else may still have to pay for more detailed records of the case.
although it may be different from the form you received because the one I found on the Internet may be for a different court.
Depending upon how things work in California, the court stamp and date might not appear on a copy of the form until the proof of service is returned to the court. The stamp for the clerk may be indistinct on your copy, and so might the file number. However, it is exactly this file number that you or any attorney would need to proceed with any filings in the court. If you live near the court, you might try to go down in person to get this number and to verify that the summons is real, because anybody can get these forms off the Internet or copy partially filled-in forms and replace information on them. If you can't get to the court, at least give them a call (or have your attorney call them) to verify that the file number is real and corresponds to a case in which you are involved.
Whatever you do, be courteous to the clerk, and he will help you as much as he is allowed to. Remember that the clerk cannot give you legal advice of any type and may be very limited in being able to make referrals to attorneys for you. He has to remain competely neutral, and may only be able to help you find (and possibly complete) forms for you, and give you limited information about the progress of the case. He may be able to direct you to a legal aid society or something similar, if you do not have the money to defend yourself. But the clerk should be able to give you the case number and be able to verify that the summons is or is not real.
Whatever you do, don't drop the ball. The summons probably gives you the legal time limit from the date of service to file an answer. (The clerk can tell probably tell you the actual date by which an answer must be filed.) If you don't file an answer by that date, you may not only lose important legal defenses, but you may also default on your case. If the debt is beyond the statute of limitations for California (or whatever other state's laws might apply), you may lose your right to waive the statutory bar defense unless you file the defense in your first answer to the complaint.
The summons seems to me to have been served in an appropriate, unremarkable manner, although I am not familiar with the specific formalities that the state of California may impose. Therefore, my guess is that you should assume that this summons is valid unless proven otherwise.
I wish there were more that I could do to help, but I can't give you, and you should not accept, anonymous legal advice over the Internet. And in the case of California in particular, it is harder and more expensive to research certain records than it is to do so in other states. (Searching court records by the name of a party is free in some states). But that's just the way it is.
My reactions would be the following:
- Make scans of the entire suspect document at 600 DPI minimum.
- Stow the original in a fireproof lockbox.
- See if summons and complaint forms are available as PDF downloads from the indicated county court. Compare the blanks to the delivered summons in painful detail.
- Take one of the copies in person to a Riverside court clerk. Ask to see the head clerk as well for another set of eyes. Ask to see blank forms for comparison.
- Ask them if there is any good reason for a summons to be served upon a person looking like yours does. See if the stamp markings could have plausibly been made by their equipment. Ask if the obscured civil action number matches the format used there. They see hundreds of these documents a year and should pick up anomalies you could miss.
- Determine if possible if the person performing service actually had the authority to do so.
- Take written notes right at the counter of everything said. Document clerk names.
- If you don't live in Riverside, do all this at the Superior court which would otherwise have jurisdiction, namely one in your home area.
Reasons for all the extra trouble:
- If suspicions are valid, the clerks' responses will be quite interesting, and they will have difficulty finding a real case folder to match.
- Debt collectors must sue where defendants live, not any old place they choose as convenient.
- Parties to litigation are typically not allowed to perform their own process service in person. The server must be someone covered by your court rules, not some flunkie from the plaintiff's office.
- The FDCPA takes care to prohibit "false representation or implication that documents are legal process." A bogus summons deployed to fool you into paying time-barred debt is a hot property you can "redeem" for an easy damage award, assuming you have a verified target for your *real* lawsuit.
You could at best have a sloppy and barely legal suit against you. Until that's proven I would assume the worst sort of flim-flam is in play.
Regarding why the place name "Corona" rings a bell, that town has been Ground Zero for the worst and most abusive fake PDL collectors the west coast has to offer, in the style of their cousins (possibly kissing cousins) in South Asia. Funny you'd raise that issue following discussion yesterday in another thread for what may be a "Corona Cabal" member.
Agreeing with others, validate the summons with the Clerk of Courts as quickly as possible. (I'm assuming you are in California.) If it proves a forgery, it's a matter for the police and the people behind it could be looking as some very serious charges. Falsifying or even altering court documents are one of those things that send judges off the deep end.
Update on the Eric guy. From what I can see, it is legit. I have just received from my employer, the payroll division, that this Eric Carmichael has in fact sued me, had a court date in Riverside and is garnishing my wages from an old credit card that was worth only $300.00 in 2006. Now he has ordered a garnishing of $1,264.90. It has been sent from the Sacramento County Sheriffs office in which also I have to pay them as well. So it looks as if Eric is not a scam.