Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 17, 1993 TAG: 9307170199
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The scam artist just has to get a service to sell - maybe patching roofs or driveways. Then he does an hour or so of shoddy work for which he charges hundreds of dollars.
The elderly person knows the job isn't worth what the scammer is asking, but after the killings of James and Evelyn Merritt, people are terrified not to pay what is demanded.
James and Evelyn Merritt, 78 and 75 years old respectively, were bound with duct tape and left to die in their College Street home in February. The previous September, two men had told the Martinsville couple their chimney was about to cave in, persuaded the Merritts to let them repair it, then stole $1,000 from a wallet and a box in the house.
Lawrence Tolbert Joshlin, 28, and Johnny Mosier, 25 - two Memphis, Tenn., men who police think may have been the con artists - have been charged with killing the elderly couple.
The latest reported rip-off scheme in Henry County occurred last week. A 60- to 65-year-old man stopped by an elderly woman's home and persuaded her to let him seal her driveway.
The man patched a few holes in the driveway, sprayed a shiny solution on it, then demanded $900 for the work.
"She paid it," Henry County Investigator K.G. Nester said, "but she just felt after the Merritt case . . . she was afraid. She told him she didn't think the work was worth that, but at some point, she just gave up.
"She said, `I was scared' . . . to report it."
The man's scheme was foiled when he tried to cash the $900 check in South Boston. An alert bank teller became suspicious and called the woman, who told the clerk she wasn't satisfied with the work and had been intimidated into paying. The teller stopped payment on the check.
The man apparently has continued to harass the 76-year-old woman.
"He has since called the lady back and demanded that she pay," Nester said. "He said, `I thought you were a good Christian woman,' and so on."
"Now she's sitting down there in her home scared to death, and we have to go back now and then to check on her."
The suspect in the case has been identified as a member of a West Columbia, S.C., group dubbed the "English Travelers." The group, so named because of its members' heritage, reportedly moves around, performing fraudulent paving operations.
Jerry Altieri, an investigator with the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, said some groups like the English Travelers come from West Virginia, Tennessee and within Virginia.
The groups and families generally scam people by doing paving, roofing or painting work. Typically, they tell a potential customer they can do a job for a reasonable price, then demand 10 times the quoted price after the shoddy work is done.
"They're usually smooth talkers; they've got good equipment a lot of times, and they try not to raise any red flags," Altieri said. "A hundred-dollar job all of a sudden becomes a thousand-dollar job."
The groups also usually target the elderly, who make poor witnesses in court and often are too embarrassed to report being tricked.
Such scam operators have become so commonplace that the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation put out a statewide advisory in May to warn consumers.
In many cases, investigators can do little but issue warnings. The roving groups of con artists generally locate somewhere, work their scams in a 50- to 60-mile radius, then move on before they get caught.
"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," Nester said. "Where do you start looking?"
by CNB