Complaint Review: Mario Cortolezzis - Waconia Minnesota

Zunker is now in Jail!  It just keeps getting better. 

http://www.chaskaherald.com/news/public_safety/zunker-begins-six-months-in-jail/article_80b7a869-f615-549f-9bdf-5fe5a67466b8.html

Hey MR Zunker,

Mario Cortolezzis is a scam artist without a doubt. He convinces good people that he is a victim just so that it is that much easier for him to take advantage of them.

Just check out his history of judgments and cases against him. It is public record and free for anyone to look up for themselves.

http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/JudgmentSearchResults.aspx?SearchLinkIndex=3

My name is Paul Zunker, and I am the Director of Public Relations for S.A.F.E.R.(referenced in this report) and also the Captain of the Police Reserve Unit (also referenced in this report) for the City of Minnetrista Public Safety Department. I would first like to start this off by saying that all of the information in the "Rip Off Report" filed about Mario Cortolezzis is completely untrue. I will start with the top of the report and work my way down. I did not know Mario back in his band days, but I have known him for around 3 years now. My family and Mario's are very close, and we spend a lot of time at his house with his other friends as well. I can say that I have personally met and talked with former members of his band that he played with, and all the ones that I have met are on very good terms with him. I can not speak first hand about the New Years Eve event in 2004, but I can tell you that we are currently working on a large summer festival for SAFER and are working directly with Autism Speaks in Chicago. If Mario would have taken Autism Speaks for any amount of money or even had a scam going saying Autism Speaks would benefit, I can guarantee you that they would not be involved with him right now. But I would ask the poster of this report to issue statements from the band members that played with Mario that night stating that they were taken for the money. Since it's easy to post anything on web sites, I would like to see written statements from these people with signatures scanned into electronic format and posted. If these claims are true, then it would not be too hard to get those. I did not know Mario during the time period in question for the "Block E" project either, so I can not speak directly to that. But I can say that Mario has never lived a "lavish" life style. Anyone who knows him knows he lives in a simple split entry single family home in Waconia and drives a Ford SUV. He doesn't wear all designer clothes and doesn't eat out at lavish restaurants. He is s simple man who lives a very simple life, and loves his family above everything else. The author if this "story" was kind enough to post Mario's address, allowing for anybody reading this right now to drive by and take a look at the "lavish" life style of Mario. I knew Mario through the Generator sales business (not called "Power Generator Sales but "Pro Power Generator Sales") and can speak directly to that. I personally witnessed Mario speaking to customers taking orders and then setting up delivery instructions. I witnessed him talking to customers with questions after receiving the product as well, so the statement by the author of this report saying "take in down payments and then not deliver any product" is completely false. I would issue a challenge to the author of this report again. Please post documentation of your claims. I would like to see bank or credit card receipts from the companies who paid for and never received any product. The generators were sold mainly to companies in Canada so I am confused as to how someone in the Twin Cities who did not work for Pro Power would first of all know who the companies who were purchasing equipment were, and secondly how they would follow up with them to know they never received any of the purchased equipment. The author stated that Mario would "delay and stall and provide excuses ad nauseum until the client finally gave up and went away" so again, I would like to see documentation to back that up. If I was a company who was taken for a sizable amount of money (and the generators were at least a couple thousand dollars) I would be more than willing to provide some documentation on the fraud that was perpetrated on me. I do not know Mario's Aunt or Uncle, but I do know his parents. I spent New years Eve of 2008 with them and other friends of Mario's over at Mario's house. His parents are some of the nicest people I have ever met. I would think that a son who took his Aunt and Uncle for a large amount of money and never re payed it would have some tension between him and his parents. Again, please provide documentation (via bank records and signed statements) backing up the fact that Mario "scammed" his Aunt and Uncle for a large amount of money. There is an Aunt and Uncle on both sides of most families, so please let the readers here know which Aunt and Uncle Mario scammed. Now I can speak to the Minnetrista Reserves part of the report very well. I interviewed Mario for his position, and he interviewed very well. But as part of the application process for the Department, our investigator does a very thorough; very complete criminal and civil background check. Mario is a member of our Reserve unit today so obviously he passed that background check. We will NOT take anyone with any "shady" civil matters in their background or any felonies. Some of the claims being put forth by the author of this report are about some pretty sizable amounts of money. I would think that at least one member of Mario's Band, the caterer, someone from the Hotel from the 2004 New Years Eve party, one of the customers of Pro Power generator Sales, Somebody from MarKo Productions or anybody from SAFER would have filed some sort of Police report or contacted the authorities about Mario. Usually when someone is a scammer, there is a lengthy Police report behind them. Mario's report is clean. Mario is a Sgt. with the Reserve Unit and volunteers a lot of his time in giving back to the residents of Minnetrista. IN fact, he received the "Reserve of the Year" award for 2007 and had the most hours volunteered in 2008. He does not ride "around in squad cars with the local authorities". The Reserves in Minnetrista have their own vehicle and are out on their own during their shifts. MarKo Productions was actually a joint venture between Mario and one of the Sgt's at the Police Department. They video taped weddings and created videos on dealing with children with special needs that were aimed at Law Enforcement, Fire and EMS Agencies. (The movies by the way were made on a Mac computer with professional editing software; not Windows Movie Maker). The videos that were produced by MarKo Productions have helped many Public Safety officials learn how to better deal with children with Autism and other special needs. Mario's son has Autism, and is the driving passion behind what Mario is doing with the special needs community. He has a love for his little guy that is far beyond the explanation of words on this web site. Mario has been, and will continue to be a tremendous advocate for those in the Autism community and every other special needs community. His passion to help those people and the people who care for them were what was behind the MarKo productions videos. I know first hand that MarKo has been dissolved, and the other owner of MarKo and Mario paid off all the bills from that company and split the remaining profits of the company equally. He and the co-owner of MarKo are still currently good friends. Neither one of them ever claimed to be part of a "large video production company" as is stated in this story. Please provide any documentation showing us where Mario ever told you that he was a member of a "large video production company". I can also talk very clearly about S.A.F.E.R. I am the director of Public Relations for SAFER and also the Chairman of the Advisory Board of SAFER. The author of this report was also kind enough to publish the link to SAFER's web site. Please go there and look at the members of the Board of Directors. The Vice-Chairs of the SAFER Board are 2 Law Enforcement Agents and 1 Fire Chief. There is Mario and myself, and I am a State Licensed EMT and work for a Law Enforcement Agency. IF Mario were a scammer as he is accused of being by the author of this report, how comfortable would he be around these people? The people on the Board of SAFER have obviously done their home work on the organization before attaching their names to the organization. But lastly, the statement about the price of the equipment is glaringly inaccurate. I would hope that someone who is making these charges would have done a little more home work before publishing this. The transmitters that go on the people with special needs are in case they wander away from their care givers and need to be located and are manufactured by LoJack, a very reputable company, out of MA. Part of what SAFER does is assist local Law Enforcement agencies and Fire Departments locate these children or adults. The transmitters that the special needs person wears cost the family $260 each. They then pay a maintenance fee of $8 every month to cover the cost of battery changes. But if the families can not afford them, the foundation from SAFER actually pays the cost for them. The funds for SAFER are managed by the Community Foundation for Carver County, so it would be fairly difficult for Mario to use SAFER as a fund-raising scam for himself. The $5,000 package that the author of this report is referring to is the public safety package, and it is worth well more than $1,000. There is actually no equipment from SAFER that has a $1,000 price tag. The $5,000 these agencies spend gets them 2 tracking receivers, 2 transmitters that they can use for training or actually donate to a special needs person in their community and 2 full days of training on the equipment. A competing organization to SAFER charges a little less in up front fees, but the program costs the agencies quite a bit more in program administration costs as they are responsible for running the program themselves. SAFER comes right along side the member agencies and provides the program administration for them at NO extra cost to anybody. There could be a tremendous revenue stream for SAFER as is evidenced by a similar organization in the US. But Mario, as the Program Director for SAFER, decided to take SAFER in a different direction. His goal is to get as many people protected by this program as possible and get as many public safety agencies on board as possible at a minimal cost to them. He does not want money to be a factor keeping them away. He has in fact been volunteering his time since the inception of SAFER and has put in many many weeks of well over 80 hours worked. I will finish my response here with some documentation of my own, as stories on the internet are indeed very hard to believe these days without documentation. I have posted links below that support Mario's character. There are many stories from local FOX affiliate stories, to local papers to Star Tribune articles about Mario. There is a story about Three Rivers Park District and their Police Chief Hugo McFee who recently deployed SAFER throughout their entire Park System. Chief McPhee would never do business with anyone who does not have good character. These are just a few articles supporting Mario's Character. But I can attest as someone more that a PR Director for SAFER or Mario's Captain on the Reserves. I can attest to Mario and his character as his friend. I have only met a few people in my life who will take you at face value as a friend with all your own faults and flaws and look past those to see the person that you really are; and Mario is one of those people. To see these things written about Mario without one ounce of supporting information is very saddening to me. Mario is one of my best friends that I have ever had and if anyone needs me to vouch for his character, please contact me. I know any of the SAFER Board of Directors will do the same thing along with anybody from the Minnetrista Public Safety Department. Please contact me at [email protected] with any questions at all. But to the author of this report, please find the time to post the requested documentation backing up your claims here. I would also urge you to call Mario and hash out your personal issues with him directly instead of doing something like this. It is sad that people are willing to attack another persons character with false claims like this over something that may have happened years ago! I am not saying that Mario is perfect, and you may have very well had a personal issue with him in the past. But I can guarantee you that the things in this article are simply not true, and I would ask that you post some type of retraction about them. Thank you, and here are the articles I talked about. Paul Zunker http://www.startribune.com/local/22179889.html?page=1&c=y http://www.waconiapatriot.com/articles/2008/11/28/the_pioneer/news/news05.txt http://www.waconiapatriot.com/articles/2008/10/09/the_pioneer/news/news05.txt http://safermn.net/Member-Cities.html http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/invisible_perimeter_for_vulnerable_individuals_march_4_2009 http://windowsmedia.alphameetings.com/LMCC/0409lakesidenews.wmv