Elderly woman scammed out of thousands in driveway con

WATERFORD TWP, mich. (WJBK) - An elderly woman in Waterford Township was ripped off by a couple of con artists pretending to repair her driveway.

Now a reward is being offered if you can help track them down. A few weeks ago, the senior citizen was in the driveway of her Waterford home when she heard a car door open.

She thought nothing of it, but a few minutes later the woman heard someone say "How are you doing today"?

"And I went to get up and this guy was face to face with me," she said.

He waved to another guy parked in the truck across her driveway, saying he was going to help her. They start talking in a different language, and the second man begins spraying sealant on the driveway.

"I said what are you doing? 'I'm going to do your whole driveway for 58,'" she said.

They do the so-called job without asking permission, and the price changes.

"I said what is this supposed to cost me, he said $58 a gallon," she said.

In the end, the crooks tell her she owes them more than $4,000.

"He said we did the work, you have to pay us. I said I don't have that kind of money here," she said, adding that the man said he will take her to the bank.

The surveillance video shows the men pulling up to a local credit union, one of them helping the lady with her walker and waited for her to come back with the cash.

"I was scared," she said. "I didn't know if I was going to live or die, and I was stupid for getting in the car."

When they came back to the woman's street, they made her get out a few houses away from her home.

"He said 'You have to get out here,'" she said. "By the time I got halfway up the ditch, he was gone. I couldn't get a license number or anything."

Now the search is one for these two scammers.

"We have several leads, some very promising," said Lt. Scott Good, Waterford police. "Our investigators right now are tracking them down and looking into them."

To add insult to injury, the suspects claimed they used roughly 80 gallons of sealant on the woman's driveway, but they didn't even do a good job.

In a situation like this, police suggest people talk to their neighbors and be on the lookout for anyone who seems odd, saying there a plenty if scams right now all over metro Detroit.

Also, when it comes to you financial institutions, be sure to put in some checks and balances.

"Say this is what I do regularly, and this is what I don't do regularly," Good said. "If I'm doing something irregularly, please question it."

"You save all your life for things and you get to where you think you're comfortable and you can pay your bills," she said. "And all of a sudden you don't have that money to pay bills."