EDITOR’S NOTE: If anyone shows up at your door claiming to have “leftover asphalt” that could be used to pave your driveway at cut rates, don’t believe it. A lengthy investigation that started with the arrest of a local paving contractor puts the spotlight on a nationwide scam that has its roots in and around Nashua. In a six-day series, The Telegraph will introduce readers to a clan of notorious cross-country paving scammers who share the same techniques and in many cases the same last name.

CVS Paving has been around Nashua for many years, though the company has attracted a number of consumer complaints and now criminal charges in New Hampshire.

Sources say CVS Paving crews have also hit the road, migrating south and west, and Cornelius “Neil” V. Stanley Sr. had been arrested in Florida before his recent troubles with the law in New Hampshire, public records show. Cornelius Stanley has also hosted one of the more notorious cross-country paving scammers, Samuel Valentine Stewart, who appears to be related by marriage.

Stanley, of 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, and two of his sons, Joseph C. Stanley and Thomas A. Stanley, of Kingston, have been charged in connection with paving scams.

Joseph Stanley has been jailed since July on paving scam charges in Nashua, and he and Thomas Stanley both face pending charges in Connecticut and Nashua. Their older brother, Cornelius “Neil” V. Stanley Jr. set up a paving business in Virginia in 2008, and his father joined him there for a time, public records show.

Beyond his immediate family, the elder Stanley’s closest relatives are scattered around southern New Hampshire – in Derry, Londonderry, Kingston, Plaistow and Salem – and many are also in the paving business. Several have also been arrested on charges stemming from alleged paving scams, mainly in the southern and southwestern United States, and several of the Stanley family-owned paving companies, including CVS, have attracted complaints to the state’s Consumer Protection Bureau.

Trouble out of state

Until his indictment in January and arrest in Nashua, Cornelius V. Stanley Sr. was previously arrested in Pinellas County, Fla., in 2001.

Public records indicate the offense took place March 7, 1997, but Stanley wasn’t arrested until Nov. 30, 2001. He was charged with fraud and unlicensed contracting, and court records indicate he was arraigned Dec. 28, 2001, and then pleaded guilty Jan. 10, 2002, and was fined $225, and paid $2,500 restitution.

In 2008, public records show that both Cornelius V. Stanley Sr. and Jr. took up residence in Virginia, where Cornelius Jr. and his wife, Rebecca, run Red Line Paving, public records show.

Cornelius V. Stanley Sr. of 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, used an address of 2234 Astoria Circle, Apt. 207, Herndon, Va., in 2009, and also 402 Nikki Terrace SE, in Leesburg, Va., in 2008. Both are rental properties, and Stanley had the property tax bill for 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, sent to the Leesburg address, city records show.

According to Rebecca Stanley, Red Line is a legitimate paving company, and the senior Stanley has nothing to do with it.

The company’s Web site, www.redlinepaving.com, does not give an address, but online business directories list the Herndon address for the firm. The company is not registered as a business entity with the Virginia secretary of state, and the Better Business Bureau rates it a C- based on a lack of verified information. The Red Line Paving Web site features photos of paving equipment and trucks that appear to have New Hampshire license plates.

Cornelius “Neil” V. Stanley Jr., was cited for minor motor vehicle offenses in Virginia on Sept. 11, 2008, and again on Feb. 16, 2009, public records show.

Public records show that Cornelius V. Stanley Sr. and his son, Cornelius V. Stanley Jr., have sometimes used the same Social Security number, which was issued in Massachusetts in the early 1980s. Cornelius Sr. used the number when he was arrested for failing to show up for a court date in December 2009. In a 1997 child support case, Cornelius V. Stanley Jr. used a Social Security number that was never issued to anyone, according to public records.

‘They call it granny grabbing’

Various other pavers sharing the Stanley name have been accused of scams in Arizona, Nevada and California. The Telegraph was unable to find any member of Cornelius V. Stanley’s immediate family who has been arrested in those states, but two former employees, one from Nashua and another from Manchester, said they worked for CVS Paving in Arizona and Texas in 2007 and 2008. Both men spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Arizona and Texas, the Stanleys worked closely with other companies run by relatives from New Hampshire and elsewhere around the country, the workers said. The families live out of large campers, while their workers shared motel rooms, and they did business mainly by cell phone.

“That’s all they do, they go around knocking on doors telling people they have extra asphalt. They know what they’re doing,” said a Nashua man who said he worked for CVS Paving in Arizona in 2008. “I thought it was a legitimate company, until after you were there for a while, you could see through the cracks, one and one wasn’t adding up to two.”

“They will go and buy 14 tons of asphalt, not even having a buyer, and they will go and force themselves to sell it,” said the former employee from Manchester. “They call it granny grabbing. This is where they take advantage of the elderly. .?.?. They will go hunt for the elderly to make their money.”

Police on the trail

Cornelius Stanley’s youngest son, Joseph C. Stanley, formerly of 32 Yarmouth Drive and 2 Devonshire Lane, Londonderry, has been jailed since July 23, facing paving scam charges in Nashua and two Connecticut towns.

His brother, Thomas A. Stanley, of 58 Route 125, Kingston, was arrested with him last summer in Monroe, Conn., where police also impounded a 2000 Peterbilt dump truck and a Ford pickup truck, both registered to Cornelius V. Stanley in Nashua, Monroe police Lt. Brian McCauley said.

Joseph and Thomas Stanley were arrested in Monroe along with a hired hand, Wallace Wilson, 46, of Merrimack, on July 9, just days after Joseph Stanley posted bail on similar charges in Nashua. Connecticut police claim that the Stanley pavers were working without the requisite license and without following state consumer-protection regulations. Their case remains pending in Bridgeport Superior Court.

Joseph Stanley was arrested June 30, in Nashua, where he stands accused of swindling two elderly homeowners out of $6,900, giving his name as “Tony Bennett,” and claiming to represent “Dunn Right Paving.” Bennett is Joseph Stanley’s mother’s maiden name, according to court records.

Stanley is accused of first targeting an 84-year-old Nashua man June 23, coating his entire driveway and demanding $4,500 after the man agreed to let them fill a pothole for $100, police said. The man said the workers intimidated him, and Stanley drove him to his bank and took a $3,900 cash payment.

Two days later, police claim Joseph Stanley paved a driveway belonging to a 94-year-old woman despite her refusal of his offer and then intimidated her into paying $3,000, driving her to the bank.

In both cases, Nashua police claim, Stanley did shoddy work, laying a thin coat of asphalt that he stamped down with boots and boards, rather than using proper equipment.

While free on bail on those charges, Stanley was arrested in Monroe, Conn., and again in Nashua, for driving after being declared a habitual offender.

Subsequently, police in Manchester, Conn., issued warrants for Joseph Stanley, Wallace Wilson and Anthony Monbleu, of 18 Middle St., Gardner, Mass., another hired worker.

Monbleu was also arrested in New Hampshire on a burglary charge, and Connecticut authorities have declined to extradite him until his pending New Hampshire charges are resolved.

Manchester, Conn., police claim the crew scammed at least four homeowners in that town, working without a contractor’s license, and using high-pressure sales tactics and charging exorbitant fees for shoddy work. Manchester police plan to charge Thomas Stanley, as well, Detective Richard Rivard said, but they were still working to make sure they identified the right Thomas Stanley; they believe that two different Thomas Stanleys were working with Joseph C. Stanley in Connecticut. In addition to recycling the same names, Rivard complained, “They all look alike.”

“From what I was told by Wallace Wilson, they go and down the East Coast doing this (paving scam),” Rivard said. “They hit the elderly, and the elderly are embarrassed to come forward. .?.?. It’s big money.”

Rivard described Joseph Stanley as the leader of the crew and said that based on Wallace’s estimates of the number of paving jobs they completed, Stanley could be making “millions,” a seven-figure annual income. Despite Joseph Stanley being “the real brain” of the crew, Rivard said, his contracts and invoices in Connecticut suggested that he was poorly educated, with a level of spelling and grammar that Rivard described as “embarrassing.”

Though Stanley was freed on bail after his first arrests in Nashua, a judge later increased his bail to $75,000 on July 23, and he’s remained behind bars ever since.

The theft charges carry a maximum of 10 to 30 years in prison under the state’s elderly exploitation laws. His case had been scheduled for trial in December, but was postponed at the request of his lawyer, who wrote that both sides were negotiating a plea bargain on the charges.

In January, however, a prosecutor with the state’s Consumer Protection Bureau filed 10 additional felony theft charges against Joseph Stanley, involving paving scams around Nashua.

His brother Thomas and father Cornelius also were charged as accomplices for a job at Bell Auto, 93 E. Hollis St.

In each case, the indictment states that Stanley proposed to charge a few hundred dollars to patch up faults in the asphalt, claiming he had material left over from another job. Stanley then spread asphalt over a much larger area and demanded thousands of dollars in payment, the indictments charge.

Criminal or civil matter?

Speaking out on Stanley’s behalf during various hearings, his lawyer, Charles Bookman, of Melrose, Mass., argued that the theft charges are unfounded.

“The inference was that Mr. Stanley somehow intimidated elderly people into giving him money for shoddy work,” Bookman said. “There’s this inference that this gentleman was taking advantage of elderly persons in a way that he has not. .?.?. These are not thefts.”

Some local police departments adopt exactly that attitude toward contractor scams: if a homeowner hires a person to do some work and work is done, any resulting dispute is for the civil courts to sort out, not a criminal case.

When police do act, their jurisdiction is limited to their town, city or county. There is one national law enforcement agency with jurisdiction across state lines, but the FBI tends to focus on terrorism and drug trafficking.

Agencies such as the New Hampshire attorney general’s Consumer Protection Bureau are authorized to offer businesses a voluntary mediation service for consumer complaints. When a business ignores the agency’s invitations to do so, the bureau refers people to small claims court. The agency also posts notices of unresolved complaints on its Web site. It has fielded several complaints involving CVS Paving, as has the state’s Better Business Bureau.

People who sue CVS get mixed results. While a former employee managed to collect $4,000 back wages, a Pelham homeowner hasn’t bothered to try to collect a nearly $50,000 judgment against the company.

Lei Hur, of 17 Scenic View Drive in Pelham, sued CVS Paving for defective work in 2007, claiming the company refused to honor its guarantee. The homeowner had paid $8,000 for a paving job that began to crumble to pieces within a month, and after first promising to repair it, CVS later ignored the homeowner’s complaints and the lawsuit. The homeowner won a $48,282.90 default judgment in Hillsborough County Superior Court, which county sheriffs were ordered to serve upon CVS and its owner in 2008. Nothing further happened in the case, despite Cornelius V. Stanley’s arrest by Hillsborough County sheriffs on two occasions in 2009.

The Consumer Protection Bureau of the New Hampshire attorney general’s office had received similar complaints against CVS paving in 2004 and 2008.

In 2004, a homeowner complained that Cornelius Stanley charged him $3,500 after laying a topcoat over his existing driveway, despite having contracted to dig out old asphalt and lay down and compact and grade a base layer of gravel.

CVS ignored the attorney general’s invitation to mediate the complaint, and the office closed its file the next year, advising the homeowner to consider small claims court.

In September 2009, after Joseph Stanley’s arrest, another complaint surfaced. The homeowner said that a Joseph and Thomas Stanley of 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, doing business as Verizon Paving, had paved their driveway during summer 2008 for $2,420, having started the job without the homeowner’s consent. The Stanleys offered a three-year warranty, but when the homeowner called to complain that the driveway was crumbling to pieces, Cornelius Stanley denied owning a paving company, they wrote.

The state Consumer Protection Bureau wrote CVS Paving in September, inviting him to respond to the complaint.

The attorney general’s office also received a complaint in 2008 about Verizon Paving and Premiere One Paving but forwarded that complaint to Joseph Stanley, of Northwood, its records show.

In May 2008, an 84-year-old Methuen, Mass., man complained that Joseph Stanley, of 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, showed up at his house, offered to pave his driveway and started to work “before I could think,” let alone agree. The two young men stamped down the hot top with their boots, demanded $3,100, and cashed the check immediately, the complaint states. The man called his daughter, who tried to get the bank to stop the check, but it was too late.

The attorney general’s office sent copies of that complaint to Joseph Stanley, of 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, and to a Joseph Stanley, in Northwood.

Andrew Wolfe can be reached at 594-6410 or awolfe@nashuatelegraph.com.