On a summer Saturday in 2007, a trespasser slipped by a security gate and entered Chris Roberts’ L.A. home. Inside, Madison Peterson, Roberts’ former common-law wife, with whom he had a long on-and-off relationship, was startled and feared her young daughter could be harmed or kidnapped. Peterson later identified the trespasser as Sandi Gardiner, who is now Roberts’ wife (for the second time) and a cofounder of Cloud Imperium. Roberts reported the incident to police, and a California judge issued a temporary restraining order that required Gardiner to stay 100 yards away from Peterson, who claimed in her temporary restraining order application that Gardiner had been stalking and threatening both her and her daughter for nearly three years.
“Ms. Gardiner has an unnatural and irrational fascination with my daughter and me,” Peterson wrote. “I constantly and continually look to make sure my daughter and I are not watched.” In a court-filed declaration he signed at the time, Roberts said Gardiner had also visited Peterson’s San Diego home and once became violent and tried to strangle him. “I believed that if she had a gun she would have killed me,” Roberts said in the declaration. “I believe that Ms. Gardiner is not emotionally stable.” After three months, the restraining order was dissolved. Today, Roberts says he cannot recall signing the declaration and that what is ascribed to him in the court filings was prepared by Peterson and false. Despite the documentation, Gardiner flatly denies the incidents took place. A few years later, Roberts cofounded Cloud Imperium with Gardiner and Freyermuth, his lawyer partner from Hollywood. He had remarried Gardiner in 2009. Their first marriage was annulled in 2005, court records show. An actress who is still trying to make it in Hollywood, the 43-year-old Australian-born Gardiner is also Cloud Imperium’s head of marketing and a driving force behind the company’s fundraising.
