Bancroft woman scammed in paving fraud

Kara McLewee of Bancroft and her family were scammed recently by someone offering to pave her driveway for $3,750 with recycled asphalt. This man said his name was Tom and his company was called Heritage Paving, both of which turned out to be lies. After doing most of the job, McLewee and her husband Christopher paid Tom, who promised to send someone back to finish. However, the work was never completed and they subsequently discovered it was a substandard job. McLewee and Bill Dickson, the regional media relations coordinator with the Ontario Provincial Police, comment on this paving scam and many others in Bancroft and across the province.

McLewee told The Bancroft Times that she usually gets a lot of offers for paving services in her neighbourhood as it’s a new subdivision. The day that Tom from Heritage Paving knocked on her door, she says she was cleaning her front closet, so she answered the door. He offered to pave her driveway with recycled asphalt, and when she asked if it was under $10,000, he said it was. It would only cost her $3,750, which seemed reasonable to her for a recycled asphalt paving job. “So not too good to be true, but seemed average for this type of job, as far as we’d researched,” she says.

McLewee said that Tom wasn’t pushy, they had a few days to think it over and he said that he didn’t expect any money until the job was done. “So, we thought how can we lose? I even said to my husband, what’s the worst that can happen? And now, I’m like ‘okay, now I know,’” she says.

McLewee and her husband asked Tom more questions about the job, which he answered to their satisfaction. She says she had even seen him doing other jobs around town and the work had looked good. “And we had seen him working into the evenings finishing the jobs and we thought wow that’s really hard work, good dedication. He had logos on his vehicles, he had big equipment, he had two teams of workers, he had a website, business cards, and we signed a contract, which I say in loose terms because there’s no better way to say it. So, all that made him look legitimate,” she says. McLewee said that the workers arrived on Tuesday morning with what they thought was recycled asphalt, put it down and started rolling it with a ride on roller, and although she thought it would take them all day, they finished in two hours, although McLewee says they only did about 95 per cent of the job. “But we hadn’t paid yet. Visually it looked okay and he said not to walk on it for a few days. It was dark, it was black and it was relatively flat. It was mostly done. There was a bit at the bottom and at the top of the driveway not tamped down, which my husband tamped down as we wanted to do that before it hardened,” she says. McLewee was out getting her kids off the bus and noticed a plastic bottle in the new driveway, which she says came out very easily, and she realized it wasn’t going to harden. “There’s no tar in it. We’ve had two people out to say that if there’s tar in this it’s negligible. It’s gravel. It’s never going to harden,” she says. McLewee says that reason they paid Tom when they did was that it was 95 per cent done and the job at that point looked reasonable to them. He also said he’d send his workers back in 15 minutes to completely finish the work. He said that he had to keep moving and find other jobs and asked for the payment, which she says she didn’t want to give him. “I said, why are we paying you now? It’s not done. And he’s like, oh, you’ll never see me again. And I thought that’s weird, but obviously I also thought well maybe he just means him and he’s going to send his workers back and we’re just not going to see him again,” she says.

What gave McLewee even more confidence at that point was that Tom and his workers were doing another paving job at her neighbour’s house so it wouldn’t have been too difficult for Tom’s workers to come back and finish her job. But of course, that never happened and they never saw Tom or his workers again. McLewee tried calling Tom for days and finally reached him, and he said he’d be back over the summer to finish up. He said to her that she and other unhappy customers were not a priority now but that new customers were. “He said, ‘we’re busy, we’ll come back in the summer and fix it.’ And I said to him, there’s no fixing this. This isn’t asphalt. This is gravel and sand and wood chips and plastic and now plastic water bottles,” she says.

At this point, McLewee says they can either leave it or have it removed, but they’re going to leave it for now as they’re so tired. “In this scenario, it wasn’t so cheap that it was too good to be true. It wasn’t competitive with real companies obviously, but I think that people are going to expect to open the door and it’ll be like $1,500. That not what this was. It was nearly $4,000,” she says.

McLewee said that Tom and his workers were very smart and knew tactics that psychologically put people at ease naturally. “And I think that’s why they got us specifically, because there were so many green flags. There were red flags, don’t get me wrong, like not charging us tax, but there were so many green flags that we were like ‘let’s have a little faith in humanity here.’ And obviously it slapped us in the face,” she says.

McLewee says that’s kind of where they are now, although they don’t expect to get their money back. “My main purpose is to get this out so as many people as possible will hear and see it and maybe see a truck or they’ll come to their door and they’ll be like ‘oh, this is them.’ I just want to stop people from having this happen to them,” she says.

Dickson told The Bancroft Times that while he can’t comment on specific complainants or confirm identities as they are victims in these matters, the OPP was initially made aware of potential issues around a paving operation in late March. “Initially it seemed as though it could be an isolated incident, but then we started hearing of others who may have been victims. The OPP Crime Unit has now launched an investigation. It’s too early to say who the people involved in the operation are, or how far afield they have been doing this. We know similar paving scams have been reported in other parts of the province in previous years. If anyone feels they may have been a victim of this operation, they should call the Bancroft OPP at 1-888-310-1122. If someone is approached, unsolicited by a paving or other contractor whose company is not familiar, who seem to use high pressure tactics and demand an immediate decision, say no. Then contact the Better Business Bureau to check the company out,” he says. “Also check with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre to learn about or report potential scams.”

Michael Riley, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Bancroft Times