CHARLOTTE — A man is suing Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden and his office, claiming incorrect charges were posted on the county’s public mugshot website, damaging his reputation. Joseph Cataldi said he was arrested in January 2023 on fraud-related charges, but the site listed sexual offense charges he says he never faced.
Cataldi filed the negligence and defamation lawsuit last year, but recently made its way to federal court.
Cataldi says he was arrested for felony obtaining property by false pretenses and felony conspiracy, but on the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office’s publicly available arrest website, he claims the charges against him were “sexual activity by a substitute parent or custodian” and “sexual battery.”
In the lawsuit, Cataldi says he’s “never been arrested, charged, or indicted for any sexual offense.”
He argues that he was defamed when he and “his wife received calls from concerned neighbors offering support, regarding the supposed sex assault charges” after they saw them.
Cataldi says McFadden and his deputies “failed to verify the accuracy of charges before publishing them on the sheriff’s website.”
The plaintiff says he suffered humiliation and reputational damages because of this.
Channel 9 reached out late Wednesday afternoon to the sheriff’s office for comment. Officials there said they do not comment on ongoing litigation.
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