FRAUD ALERT

I received this disturbing email from a friend of mine:

I believe you said you were working with senior fraud for AARP? Well, let me tell you what happened to my father-in-law yesterday. He's home minding his own business when a man knocks on the door and says he's from James Joels Asphalt and they were working in the neighborhood and had some leftover product and would do his driveway for $26 !!! That price is crazy. I wonder if he misheard $2600??? Anyway, he agrees. They show up with the big machine and a bunch of guys and proceed to do the back half of his driveway and then they stop. A young kid (claiming to be the son of the owner or the guy who knocked on the door originally) comes to the door and says he needs Leroy to sign a contract, but the price on the contract is $4,400! Leroy says "What kind of scam are you trying to run here?" The kid claims its not a scam and asks Leroy how much he thinks the job would be worth. Leroy says $200 (which is totally unrealistic), but the kids says the best he can do is $2,600 or he offered to leave with half the job done. I have no idea how much he would have asked for half the job, because my father-in-law agreed to pay $2,600. Now, it seems he probably paid a pretty fair price for what he got (we haven't gone over to see it yet, but Leroy is happy.) What we object to is the strong arm approach they used, in this case on an 87 year old man. I don't know what you can do and we should probably also call the better business bureau, but I hate to think of how many other old people they will hit with this scam. My father-in-law was not in the market for a driveway when he woke up that day and was totally befuddled by the outlandishly great deal he thought he was going to get. He's pretty defensive right now because both his sones got on his case pretty hard.

Name of the company:
James Joel's Asphalt
6508 S 27th St, Suite 916
Oak Creek WI
414-688-6865 866-577-3568

I reported this to my connections at AARP and yes, (unfortunately) they have heard of this ploy before. We contacted the WI Office Of Privacy Protection (OPP); OPP is a part of the WI Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. They have filed a report and will proceed with an investigation. Stay tuned . . .

Thought you all should know about this -- there's some shady people lurking behind the bushes out there, be careful.

Learn to Recognize, Resist, and Report fraud.