The Driveway Scam
By Senior Spin Staff
A senior citizen watering his front lawn on a summer afternoon in a peaceful Portland, Maine suburb is an unlikely potential crime victim, but the men rolling past his house in their pick-up truck spotted him immediately as a mark. They pulled over and one of the men got out, examining the driveway as he walked towards the homeowner. Explaining that he had been in the neighborhood doing repairs, he offered to repave the driveway at a very reasonable price.
The homeowner hesitated: the driveway didn't really need to be repaved, but the Maine winter had taken a bit of a toll. Luckily for him, his wife refused to hire these door-to-door transients.
Had he agreed to the repairs, he would have become another victim of the driveway scam.
Like the many others taken in by this scam, his driveway would have been paved with black paint or used motor oil. He might have been charged far more than the original quote when the "job" was done, and he might have been threatened should he refuse to pay.
Even worse might have happened: the local police in his town had issued a warning on their website about the travelling scam artists offering driveway repairs in the area. They cautioned that not only would the service be inferior, these criminals had a habit of creating distractions to provide cover for an accomplice to sneak into the house to steal.
These travelling scam artists often move with the seasons, ranging as far north as Canada in the summer. Attorneys General in most states have issued warnings about driveway scam, but they continue to rove across the country, finding new victims.
They often target senior citizens, sometimes with threats and intimidation. In North Carolina, an 87-year-old woman refused the driveway repairs, and the con artists went ahead and paved it anyway, using inferior materials. They then attempted to charge her $1500.00. In one bizarre Indiana case , an elderly woman was charged $6,500.00 for driveway repairs. When the two scam artists returned a week later and discovered that she did not remember them, they paved her driveway again and charged her $4,700.00.
Scams are not limited to driveway repairs. Sometimes homeowners will be approached with offers to do yard work, clean the gutter or fix the roof. One should never hire anyone who comes knocking at the door looking for business. If you need some work done on your house, call a few legitimate, licensed contractors in your area, ask for estimates and get a clear written estimate of both the extent of the work which will be done and the total amount to be paid.
