Published: June 30, 2009 10:53 pm      

NORTH TONAWANDA: Officials wary of ‘gypsy’ scam

The recent burglary of a North Tonawanda business has fueled suspicions that a group of “gypsy” scam artists may be looking to defraud area homeowners.

Building Inspector Cosimo Capozzi became concerned following a recent break-in at A-Best Roofing and Siding, 7 Payne Avenue — a reputable contractor, he said.

He suspects the business may have been burglarized so that thieves could access names and addresses of pending work orders before scamming those customers using the legitimate contractor’s identity.

“I got a note from a local contractor that (others) have been broken into by this ‘band of gypsies’ who stole their contracts,” Capozzi said. “They broke into the office, went through the files and stole nothing other than copies of their contracts.”

Based on the limited information he’s heard, Capozzi said the same individuals — perhaps from a different part of the country — could then go to the future job site and assume the identity of the contractor in order to either pull illegal permits under the company’s name or else take a down payment on a job they’ll never do.

Regarding illegal permits, Capozzi said the city guards against such fraud by requiring various identification from the same workers listed on a given permit application.

“When we catch them, if I can drag them into court I’d prosecute the hell out of them,” Capozzi said.

City police are taking a far more measured approach, however. No such scam has yet been documented in the city.

North Tonawanda Police Det. Rob Kalota, who is investigating the A-Best incident, said it occurred sometime between June 13 and 15, but that initially, the owners couldn’t determine exactly what had been taken.

Kalota hasn’t heard of any specific fraud fitting the above description in North Tonawanda, and said he also hasn’t been assigned to investigate any similar break-ins, at least not in his jurisdiction.

Prior to the burglary, he said two auto shops had also been burglarized, but wouldn’t draw any connection between those prior incidents and the one at A-Best.

“They haven’t been able to come up with anything that was taken ... and that’s when they brought up this ‘gypsy’ scam where they come up from the South and essentially just steal work out from underneath these guys. When I talked to A-Best there was no known incidence of this type of thing — it was a word-of-mouth warning, is how I understand it, from A-Best, you know ‘this kind of thing is going around, so be alerted to it,’ ” Kalota said.

Capozzi said he’s not aware of any firm examples of such fraud, either, but he’s dealing with one case now where it’s “questionable what these guys are doing.”

He said a contractor may already have falsely represented himself as an employee of A-Best.

The owner of the company, Tom Arida, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.