Last summer in June, around the same time that Joseph Stanley of Nashua began making news with paving scam allegations, William Stanley, 24, of Lowell, Mass., was accused of unlicensed paving around Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported.

Doing business as Bituminous Paving, the Lowell Stanley caused particular headaches for a Bangor business owned by another man by the same name.

Bituminous Paving’s William Stanley was accused of using sales tactics illegal in the state of Maine, and doing shoddy work. The paper found two businesses and nine residents who felt they had been swindled by the company.

“It looked at first like they did all right, but the tar didn’t even harden at all,” Gilbert Bouchard of Millinocket told the paper. “It was two or three weeks before we could drive on it. Some of the street paving is real thin and he wasn’t even licensed on it and we didn’t even know about that.”

Stanley denied taking advantage of anyone, but admitted that he was unaware that Maine law requires contractors to be licensed, provide written contracts and estimates, and allow a three-day cancellation period before starting any job, the paper reported.

“I am not going to lie to you. I was ignorant. I didn’t know the law,” Stanley told the paper.

Stanley was charged with several misdemeanors for violating those consumer regulations, but Millinocket police told the paper they weren’t convinced that Bituminous Paving’s allegedly poor work amounted to criminal fraud, but was more a civil dispute.

Greater Northern Paving Co. owner William Stanley, 52, of Bangor, Maine, complained that the Massachusetts paver had hurt his business, as people began to confuse the two.

Greater Northern had been doing business in Bangor for 21 years, with all requisite licensing, and the elder Stanley complained that transient pavers damage the industry’s reputation.

“I know their practice. It just makes it hard for everybody else,” Stanley told the paper.

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