Published: June 30, 2009 08:00 pm      

NORTH TONAWANDA: Are gypsies stealing building contracts?

Building inspector’s concerns unconfirmed by police

The recent burglary of a North Tonawanda business has some in the city suspicious a group of gypsy scam artists may be looking to defraud area homeowners.

City police, however, say no such scam has yet to be documented in the city.

Building Inspector Cosimo Capozzi became concerned following a recent break-in at A-Best Roofing and Siding, 7 Payne Ave. — a reputable contractor, he said.

He suspects the business may have been burglarized so that thieves could access names and addresses of pending work orders before scamming those customers using the legitimate contractor’s identity.

“I got a note from a local contractor that (others) have been broken into by this ‘band of gypsies’ who stole their contracts,” Capozzi said. “They broke into the office, went through the files and stole nothing other than copies of their contracts.”

North Tonawanda Police Det. Rob Kalota said Tuesday he hasn’t been assigned to investigate any similar break-ins, at least not in his jurisdiction.

Based on the limited information he’s heard, Capozzi said the same individuals — perhaps from a different part of the country — could then go to the future job site and assume the identity of the contractor in order to either pull illegal permits under the company’s name or else take a down payment on a job they’ll never do.

Regarding illegal permits, Capozzi said the city guards against such fraud by requiring various identification from the same workers listed on a given permit application.

“When we catch them, if I can drag them into court I’d prosecute the hell out of them,” Capozzi said.

The owner of A-Best, Tom Arida, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Kalota, who is investigating the break-in, said it occurred sometime between June 13-15, but that initially, the owners couldn’t determine exactly what had been taken.

Prior to the burglary, he said two auto shops had also been burglarized, but wouldn’t draw any connection between those prior incidents and the one at A-Best.

“They haven’t been able to come up with anything that was taken ... and that’s when they brought up this ‘gypsy’ scam where they come up from the south and essentially just steal work out from underneath these guys,” Kalota said. “When I talked to A-Best there was no known incidence of this type of thing — it was a word-of-mouth warning, is how I understand it, from A-Best, you know ‘this kind of thing is going around, so be alerted to it.’ ”