Elderly Lovejoy sisters claim fraud by scam artist
Contractor allegedly fleeced older women
By Lou Michel
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
03/03/09
Joseph M. Ralston persuaded the sisters to borrow more than $21,000 on their credit cards to replace a chimney he claimed was in disrepair, police say.
About a month ago, Ralston stopped by 85-year-old Dorothy Pannullo’s William Street home and told her 70-year-old sister, Carolyn Stevens, their chimney was falling apart, the sisters recalled Monday, a day after Ralston was arrested.
Ralston allegedly showed up with a crew of men who scaled the roof of the two-story house and began chipping away at the bricks and mortar joints to prove the chimney was in danger of toppling.
“He said our whole chimney needed to be torn down because it was bad,” Stevens said.
When she tried to argue that his men had just loosened the chimney with their hammers, she said, Ralston ignored her.
Pannullo says she feels she and her sister didn’t have a chance once Ralston had set his sights on them.
Twice, Ralston has spent time in state prison for stealing thousands of dollars from senior citizens in home-improvement scams that span two decades.
Nine years ago, when he was sent to prison for scamming three different women in Cheektowaga and Buffalo out of a total of $16,000, he had told the judge he needed professional treatment for his drug addiction.
In 1993, he was arrested for a home-improvement scam in the Town of Tonawanda that, authorities said, involved a group of individuals who had charged an 89-year-old Lackawanna woman $1,600 to fix three leaky faucets. In another case, a 90-year-old Lackawanna woman was billed for repairing a chimney that didn’t exist.
Abridged
SOURCE: Buffalo News - NY, United States
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