NASHUA – The road to prison for Joseph Stanley is paved with bad intentions and low-grade asphalt.

Prosecutors believed as much, and on Thursday, Stanley admitted that he intimidated elderly residents into paying exorbitant fees for shoddy driveway paving jobs.

Stanley, 19, pleaded guilty to 11 felony charges that he promised low estimates to pave residential driveways, did substandard work and then pressured customers into paying more afterward.

“The quality of the work is ridiculously poor,” Assistant Attorney General Tracy Culberson said earlier this year at a court hearing for Stanley. “He lies to the victims to get his foot in the door. It is always his intention to do the work, and then demand more.”

In Hillsborough County Superior Court on Thursday, Stanley pleaded guilty to two felony counts of theft, nine felony counts of theft by deception, one misdemeanor count of violating New Hampshire’s Consumer Protection Act, and one unrelated felony count of operating a vehicle after being declared a habitual offender.

Stanley’s father, Cornelius V. Stanley Sr., 47, of Nashua, and one of his brothers, Thomas A. Stanley, 20, of Kingston, also have been charged in connection with one of the alleged scams at an auto repair shop in Nashua.

Joseph Stanley used various business names, including Dunn Paving, Verizon Paving and Road One Paving, Culberson said.

He was first arrested on paving scam charges in Nashua in June 2009.

Prosecutors say during the summer months of 2008 and 2009, Stanley approached at least a dozen homeowners and businesses in the Nashua area claiming that his paving crew had leftover asphalt. He would point out defects in the homeowner’s driveways and offer to repave them with the leftover asphalt.

“Stanley would quote the homeowners a price of $200-$300 for the work,” Culberson said in a prepared statement. “Once the work was completed, however, Stanley would then demand several thousand dollars more for the work. Out of fear, confusion, intimidation, or a desire to get the pavers to leave, the homeowners would relent and pay the higher cost. Most of the victims were elderly homeowners intentionally targeted by Stanley.”

Days after he was released on bail in New Hampshire, he and his brother Thomas were arrested in Monroe, Conn., where police also impounded a 2000 Peterbilt dump truck and a Ford pickup truck, both registered to their father.

Connecticut police charged that the Stanley brothers and two employees were working without the requisite contractor’s license and without following state consumer-protection regulations.

The New Hampshire attorney general’s office’s Elder Abuse and Financial Exploitation Unit, a specialized division that prosecutes cases of elder abuse, neglect and financial exploitation, prosecuted Joseph Stanley’s case.

Some of the theft charges carry up to 10 to 30 years in prison under the state’s elderly exploitation laws.

The Stanleys are part of a large, extended family, many of whom have made their living in asphalt for generations. Some Stanley family paving crews migrate south and west during the winter, when paving is impossible in New England.

Some of Stanley’s relatives run reputable paving companies, while others have been subject of complaints to the state’s Consumer Protection Bureau.

Albert McKeon can be reached at 594-5832 or amckeon@nashuatelegraph.com.