Surveillance footage showing Matt DePerno supposedly trespassing on Deborah Loomis' property. (Source: Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Department)

Republican Michigan attorney general candidate Matt DePerno faced accusations of trespassing and aiding in harassment in 2019.

While working as an attorney for a couple, Tom and Dawn Stapert from Schoolcraft, Mich. video and photographic evidence shows DePerno entering the property of a neighbor to take pictures of a boat shed. In the pictures, a “NO TRESSPASSING” sign is in clear view as well as a fence marking the property line, both of which DePerno would have noticed before entering the adjacent yard.

An incident report photograph of surveillance footage showing Matt DePerno supposedly trespassing on Deborah Loomis’ property. (Source: Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department)

 

Deborah Loomis, the property owner, filed the trespassing complaint, claiming to have been in a decades-long dispute with the Staperts. This dispute involved one instance in 2018 where Tom Stapert was charged for assault with a deadly weapon after driving his car into Loomis’ husband’s caretaker. Loomis also contended that DePerno waited until the caretaker left before he photographed the boat shed.

An incident report photograph showing Deborah Loomis’ property, with the property line and “NO TRESSPASSING” sign marked. (Source: Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department)

 

DePerno told police that he was hired by the Staperts but denied ever entering Loomis’ property or reading her “NO TRESSPASSING” sign. The Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s office dropped charges against DePerno because there was no evidence he was ever warned against trespassing before entering the property.

Last September, former President Donald Trump endorsed DePerno, who gained national notoriety in 2020 for an Antrim County lawsuit about voter fraud. This was one of the many cases where widespread voter fraud was not found after the 2020 presidential election.

Prior to his dedication to overthrowing the 2020 election, DePerno was fired from a law firm he worked at in 2005 for manipulating the firm’s timekeeping system and falsifying billing to clients.

DePerno “committed fraud, deceit and dishonesty with regards to bogus billing, duplicate billing and write offs, in addition to other wrongful acts,” his former law firm argued in a legal filing from 2006.

On Aug. 27, a Republican state convention will be held in Michigan to determine whether DePerno is nominated to run in the general election in November.