Contracting and paving scams can be tough to prove and fly-by-night companies difficult to catch, law enforcement officials say. Some police departments adopt an attitude toward contractor scams that 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 large-scale drug trafficking.

“You think they are going to be interested in a 92-year-old lady up the road who got ripped off for $3,500 in a paving scam? Not likely,” said a Florida law enforcement source who keeps his database of scam artists and paving contractors who have run afoul of the law.

That leaves agencies such as the New Hampshire attorney general’s Consumer Protection Bureau.

In past years, the bureau handled paving complaints mainly by asking businesses to take part in its voluntary mediation service for consumer complaints, an approach that proved ineffective with some companies.

More recently, the bureau teamed up with Nashua police to investigate and prosecute complaints against CVS Paving owner Cornelius V. Stanley Sr., 47, of Nashua, and two of his sons, Joseph C. Cooper, 19, of Londonderry and Thomas A. Stanley, 20, of Kingston.

After complaints against the younger Stanley brothers began to surface last summer, bureau prosecutor Assistant Attorney General Tracy Culberson began reviewing cases in conjunction with Nashua police.

The bureau had fielded complaints against CVS Paving before, but not much came of it, records show. Last summer, however, Joseph Stanley was charged with two scams in Nashua and several more in Connecticut. In January, Culberson brought additional theft charges stemming from 10 more complaints, including one involving his father and brother.

While those charges wrapped up the investigation into local Stanley paving companies, Culberson said he would continue to pay particular attention to paving complaints, reviewing each one personally with an eye toward prosecution.

“Each of these cases, no matter what company it is, they’re going to get put under the microscope,” Culberson said. “I can guarantee that if they’re breaking the law, we’re going to charge them.”

Not all paving company complaints will involve criminal violations, but those that do will be prosecuted, Culberson said. Door-to-door paving sales tend to violate various state business regulations, including the right to rescind a contract within the first three days, he noted.

“You shouldn’t be surprised when you start seeing these people getting arrested,” Culberson said. “These guys are just criminals, and they need to be treated as criminals.”

Consumer complaints are not typically treated as crimes, however.

People who think they have been scammed, defrauded or otherwise mistreated by any business in New Hampshire can contact the Consumer Protection Bureau by phone, e-mail, letter or through its Web site.

All complaints undergo an initial review, to see whether it’s something the agency can act upon. If so, Culberson said, the agency starts by sending the business a letter to notify the owners about the complaint and offer to mediate.

“Our practice has been to then send the letter to the paving company with a copy of the complaint, asking them for a response,” Culberson said.

If the business doesn’t respond within 10 days, the agency sends a second letter. If the business still doesn’t respond, that can be the end of the matter, Culberson said.

“A lot of times they do ignore us,” Culberson said of paving companies, and added it’s likely that many victims never bother to file complaints. “They are out there hedging their bets that people aren’t going to make a complaint. .?.?. Out of the 10 complaints we get to our office, there’s probably another 30 or 40 out there.”

When closing a case without action, the bureau sends a letter advising the complaining person to consult a lawyer and pursue a lawsuit, and keeps the complaint on file. Typically, the bureau only goes after a business when they see a pattern of repeat complaints, he said.

“We’ve had limited resources and limited ability to go after these companies,” Culberson said.

The agency’s staff has increased in recent years with the addition of an elder abuse unit, and it also has seen a pattern of paving complaints, including the charges against Joseph Stanley, of Nashua, he said.

“They have gotten so bold and drawn so much attention to themselves,” Culberson said.

“Those (paving complaints) don’t just go into a file with a letter sent any more. They come across my desk,” he said.

Cease and desist

Before the latest investigation, the Consumer Protection Bureau has had mixed results in dealing with paving company complaints. Take Road One Paving, for example.

Joseph Stanley, of 11 Denmark Drive, Northwood, has been sanctioned by the state of Vermont for paving scams, and is the subject of at least four complaints filed with New Hampshire’s Consumer Protection Bureau, all involving paving work.

Joseph Stanley’s company, Road One Paving, of Northwood, is registered as a trade name with the secretary of state, under his wife’s name. It’s not clear whether Joseph and Jane Stanley, of 11 Denmark Drive, Northwood, are related to the Stanleys of Greater Nashua, but public records suggest that they may be kin. Mildred Stanley, a woman who is a member of Cornelius V. Stanley’s extended family in Derry and Salem, once lived at the Northwood address, records show, and Jane Stanley once lived at 189 Rockingham Road in Derry.

In spring 2008, the Vermont attorney general’s office announced that Joseph Stanley, of Northwood, had been ordered to pay more than $71,000 after failing to respond to a lawsuit the state brought against him as a result of consumer complaints in 2006.

Prosecutors sued Stanley in Washington Superior Court in Montpelier, Vt., in 2006, claiming that Stanley scammed homeowners and businesses in Vermont that year by soliciting paving jobs, and then demanding payments far higher than he’d cited initially, once the work was done.

Stanley was doing business as Road One Paving and rented a warehouse in South Burlington, Vt. Authorities claimed he also violated various state consumer protection laws.

Stanley never responded to the lawsuit, and in 2008, Vermont Assistant Attorney General Elliot Berg announced, Judge Dennis Pearson ordered that Stanley cease doing paving business in Vermont; pay full refunds to four customers totaling $27,650; pay a $40,000 fine, plus $3,570.95 in fees and costs.

Pearson gave the state a year to identify any other customers who might claim refunds from Stanley.

Berg did not respond to phone messages asking whether the state collected on the court order, however.

New Hampshire authorities have been gentle with Road One Paving in comparison, records show. The Consumer Protection Bureau has fielded at least four complaints against the company in the past several years.

In keeping with state privacy laws, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office blacked out information that could identify the persons who filed the complaints before releasing the records. That protects their privacy but also makes it impossible to seek the complainants’ thoughts on how the agency handled their complaint.

In 2006, the records show, the bureau negotiated a $1,000 refund for a person who had hired Road One Paving for a $4,000 paving job in 2004. The complainant wrote that the company did a poor job and reneged on promises to fix it.

Stanley did not respond to three similar complaints in 2005 and 2008, records indicate, and no further action was taken. The complaints and his lack of response are noted on the agency’s Web site.

In one case, Joseph Stanley, of Northwood, was alleged to be doing business as A-1 Paving, and in others, the complaints were directed at more than one company. A Bow resident complained in 2005 against Road One and Patriot Paving, of 48 Windham Road, Derry, who worked together at the residence. That resident documented the shoddy paving by video, hired a lawyer and threatened to sue both companies, in addition to filing a complaint with the attorney general’s office, records show.

Mistaken identity?

It’s surprising how many Joseph Stanleys work in the paving business in New Hampshire, and it appears that at least one of the four complaints against Joseph Stanley, of Northwood, may have been sent his way by mistake.

A 2008 complaint indicates that a Joseph Stanley, doing business as Verizon Paving (on his invoice) and Premiere Paving (on his truck), overcharged for a substandard paving job earlier that year. Although the complainant wrote that they suspected that Joseph Stanley was from Derry, the attorney general’s office contacted Joseph Stanley of Northwood about the complaint.

In May 2008, the agency also received a complaint about Verizon Paving from the family of an 84-year-old Methuen, Mass., man. The man wrote 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 had 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, but the agency ultimately wasn’t empowered to act on the out-of-state complaint.

The Yarmouth Drive address is the home of Cornelius V. Stanley, owner of CVS Paving and father of the Joseph C. Stanley who is charged with paving scams in Nashua and several Connecticut communities.

Culberson has since said Joseph C. Stanley, of Londonderry and Nashua, also used the business names Road One and Verizon Paving.

The New Hampshire attorney general’s Consumer Protection Bureau also received a similar complaint against CVS Paving in 2004, but the company declined to respond, records show. In 2004, a homeowner complained that Neil 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 a Joseph and Thomas Stanley, of 32 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, doing business as Verizon Paving, had paved his driveway during the summer of 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 consumer protection bureau wrote CVS Paving in September, inviting him to respond to the complaint. No one did, records show.

Honest work?

Paving scam cases can be difficult to prove, prosecutors acknowledge, because they typically involve some actual work being done, even if it is shoddy work.

Speaking on Joseph Stanley’s behalf during various hearings, his lawyer, Charles Bookman, of Melrose, Mass., said Stanley contends that he simply received honest pay for honest work.

“There’s this inference that this gentleman was taking advantage of elderly persons in a way that he has not,” Bookman said. “These are not thefts.”

Such arguments can be effective, especially with local police.

In August 2004, Epsom police reported that a resident had been scammed by a paving company run by someone named Stanley. Officers identified a Joseph Stanley, of 18 Cross St., Salem, working for Pro Paving, as a potential suspect, but concluded that whatever had happened was not a crime but a business dispute, their reports state. The caller reported that the pavers had charged his father $6,300 to coat an 1,800-square-foot driveway based on a promised price of $2 per square foot (which should come out to $3,600). Another resident called police because she was suspicious of an offer to pave her driveway with “leftover” asphalt at $1.50 a square foot and was warned about possible scams, police report.

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