Zaji Zajradhara
NORTHERN Marianas College has filed for a temporary restraining order against Zaji Zajradhara for harassing Small Business Development Center employees.
NMC, through attorney Mark Scoggins, also sued Zajradhara in Superior Court for undetermined damages to be proven at trial.
The complaint asked the court for a TRO and an eventual permanent injunction restraining Zajradhara from communicating with the SBDC or its employees by any method and for any reason.
NMC wants the court to restrain Zajradhara from coming within 500 yards of the SBDC or any of its events, including but not limited to the event scheduled for Thursday, April 4 at Crown Plaza Resort.
NMC said a court hearing should be held 10 days from the filing of the TRO petition.
According to the complaint, the SBDC is funded through a cooperative agreement between NMC and the U.S. Small Business Administration, and its mission is to promote entrepreneurship, small business growth, and the economy.
The SBDC mainly provides counseling services to small businesses and sometimes sponsors events.
According to Scoggins, “Mr. Zajradhara is an individual who, over the last ten or twelve years, has tried to make a living by falsely accusing entities of discrimination or retaliation, and then extracting settlements and sometimes filing litigation over his claimed status as an ‘Afro-Latino Seminole,’ a person over the age of 55, and other claimed attributes.”
He said Zajradhara’s “fraudulent practices have become so prolific and pernicious that in 2019 the CNMI House of Representatives passed a House Resolution (H.R. 21-5) declaring Mr. Zajradhara ‘persona non grata’ due to his ‘ill-intended schemes in extracting funds from various businesses…and threatening nature to such businesses….”
Sometime in the middle of 2022, Zajradhara began to target the SBDC, Scoggins said.
“Mr. Zajradhara claimed to be the owner of one or more small businesses and began demanding that the SBDC provide services to him. This included demands for services that the SBDC does not provide to anyone, or otherwise were demands for non-specific services that the employees of the SBDC had difficulty understanding,” Scoggins added.
When the SBDC tried to inform Zajradhara that they could not provide the services he was demanding, he became abusive with the employees, sometimes yelling and behaving in a threatening manner, falsely accusing them of discrimination and illegal activity,” Scoggins said.
“On information and belief, this is Mr. Zajradhara’s pattern and practice,” the lawyer added.
“He engages with businesses or other entities such as the SBDC, not in any good faith intention but in a manner intended by Mr. Zajradhara to be bothersome or antagonizing to the entity’s personnel. He then attempts to use the reactions that he intentionally provokes to make false claims of discrimination or retaliation,” Scoggins said.
By the end of 2022 and into the beginning of 2023, Zajradhara’s “constant harassment of the SBDC had begun taking an emotional toll on [its] employees, and was also taking an inordinate amount of their time,” Scoggins said.
In addition to the pattern of harassment against the SBDC, its employees “are aware that Mr. Zajradhara has made threats of actual violence to entities such as the Department of Labor and the Cannabis Commission. This causes the SBDC to have some concern for their own safety,” Scoggins said.
On Jan. 31, 2023, the SBDC sponsored an event held at Crown Plaza Resort for federal contracting training.
“Mr. Zajradhara’s harassment of the SBDC intensified in the weeks leading up to this event,” Scoggins said.
On Jan. 30, Scoggins sent a letter to Zajradhara demanding that he cease and desist from his harassment of the SBDC. The lawyer informed Zajradhara that he was not welcome to attend the federal contracting training. He was told that if he appeared, the SBDC would seek to have him arrested for trespassing and for violation of the CNMI stalking statute.
But Zajradhara appeared at the Jan. 31 event.
Scoggins said SBDC employees “denied him access to the room in which the event was held and asked him to leave. When Mr. Zajradhara refused to leave, the SBDC employees called the Department of Public Safety and asked that he be removed for trespassing and stalking. The DPS officer declined to remove Mr. Zajradhara from the hotel premises because the SBDC, and not the hotel itself, was asking him to be removed.”
Zajradhara sat in a chair outside the window of the event space in view of the event participants rather than simply leave the hotel, Scoggins said.
“Mr. Zajradhara’s actions were disruptive of the federal contracting event and were also physically and emotionally taxing for the SBDC’s staff and other organizers,” Scoggins added.
He said at the two other events held by the SBDC on March 8 and July 28 of 2023, Zajradhara attempted to show up but was rejected.
“Mr. Zajradhara attempted to register for SBDC scheduled events on Jan. 25 and 26, 2024, but was rejected.
“On March 13, 2024, Mr. Zajradhara again tried to register for events but was rejected.
“Mr. Zajradhara then made numerous abusive phone calls to the SBDC,” Scoggins said.
“Mr. Zajradhara’s pattern of abuse and harassment against the SBDC has continued. Very recently, Mr. Zajradhara yelled at SBDC staff on the phone so loudly that his voice could be heard from across the room,” the lawyer said.
Regarding the SBDC event scheduled for April 4 at Crown Plaza, Scoggins said he sent a second cease and desist letter to Zajradhara informing him that he may not attend this event.
Scoggins said the “SBDC and its employees have suffered emotional injury due to Mr. Zajradhara’s conduct, damage to its and their reputations, and have been forced to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy dealing with [his] abusive and harassing conduct. This constitutes irreparable harm for which a temporary restraining order is appropriate.”
Moreover, the lawyer said, Zajradhara’s conduct is “outrageous and demonstrates his ‘evil motive [and] his reckless indifference to the rights…’ of the SBDC and its employees….”
Scoggins said on information and belief, Zajradhara “has no regular income other than that gained from his fraudulent activities. It is therefore likely that [he] would be unable to pay a money judgment against him. This too constitutes irreparable harm.”
Scoggins said the “U.S. Small Business Administration has given its support to the SBDC with respect to its handling of Mr. Zajradhara’s abusive and harassing conduct, and is willing to refer the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice.”
