DEFRAUDING THE FRAUD…Squid knows what it feels like to hold a grudge, with recurring nightmares of two bigger squidlets who used to snatch Squid’s snacks back in the day. But Squid also knows how to let some things go, a skill apparently not shared by Los Altos artist Gilbert Marosi. Marosi claims he got ripped off by Carols Porras, the proprietor of Canapo Gallery in Carmel, and it seems like every time Marosi loses one lawsuit, he files two more. And when that doesn’t work, he fires off enraged emails.

Marosi alleges the gallery owes eight artists nearly $48,000, a figure that’s continued to balloon over the past year-and-a-half of lawsuits—which Marosi loses every time.

Since Marosi got no relief in court, he’s instead opted to go after Monterey County Superior Court judges Lydia Villarreal and Kay Kingsley, Carmel Mayor Jason Burnett and Carmel PD Chief Mike Calhoun. The more, the merrier.

Since these people aren’t accustomed to responding to emails that open with threats of sending the FBI after them to collect on an artist’s commission, they’ve apparently been ignoring Marosi.

“You are approaching D day, D for destruction of your cozy lifestyle,” Marosi wrote in a Nov. 13 email. “Flash over to gloomy days in a jail cell where you can ponder at leisure your halcyon days as a mayor, a chief of Police, a consumer fraud attorney. Those days will be gone forever!!!!”

In another: “You will go to jail. It will be the end of your career. What more can I say!”

If only he did run out of the things to say. But Marosi’s been been cultivating this, uh, special skill of his for more than a decade. “I have had about 10 years being forced to litigate cases,” he emails Squid. “In all my years and having been in front of about 15 judges I would rank them in honesty and ethics from a low of 0 percent to 5 percent.”

Our justice system is far from perfect, Squid thinks, but when you play odds like that, it must be in the eye of the beholder.