Attorney General Clark brings warning about recovery scams to southern Vermont

By Cara Philbin
©2023 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark hit the road last week to hear from southern Vermont residents impacted by the July floods.

Together with Vermont Senate Majority leader Alison Clarkson who represents Windsor County, Stephen Clark of the Small Business Association and Emily McDonnell, a small business advocate in the Attorney General’s Office, she held a public question and answer session at Java Baba’s in Okemo Marketplace in Ludlow, which was heavily damaged in the flood.

“I saw the picture of this plaza and my heart sank,” Clark told the 15 or so people in attendance. “It was very upsetting and I felt helpless … Then I remembered the attorney general has a lane here. So I thought, I can visit these communities and let them know what resources we have.”

Scams are one of the issues Clark’s office tracks and she wanted to spotlight scams that could arise from the floodwaters.

“Scammers are looking for the easiest way to steal your money,” Clark said in an interview. “Natural disasters present new ways to do that, and we anticipated an uptick in scams” when Vermont was repeatedly hit by floods. A representative for Clark’s office said they have received nearly 50 consumer complaints, in the five weeks since the initial devastation.

“I want to unpack how to protect yourself, and there’s a general formula of a scam to be on the lookout for,” she said. “The first is: emotions are high. People are excited, scared, worried. The second is: you don’t know this person. They’re asking you to give money and saying it’s urgent. When you have that combination, you should immediately think that this could be a scam.”

Clark said criminals exploit the emotional climate that comes with loss. They often pose as government recovery workers, utility company employees or charities, all to extract money and personally identifiable information from survivors. But not all disaster-related scams involve imposters, and the Vermont Attorney General’s office has been targeting construction and home improvement fraud since before she was elected.

“Every year, the top five complaints to the Consumer Assistance Program involve home improvement contractors,” in which a contractor either starts work and never finishes, takes a deposit and never starts or simply takes too long, Clark said. “Home improvement fraud is a crime, and we receive a ton of complaints from consumers who pay for the whole job but the work doesn’t get completed.

Clark said that Vermont recently passed a bill requiring contractors with client agreements of $10,000 or more to hold a contract with the client and register with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office.

“Those who are hiring a contractor should feel free to provide a down payment, but they shouldn’t prepay for the entire job,” she said. In the case of bad actors, her office tracks those here.

The law also created a home improvement specialist position in her office, who is available to answer questions from both construction clients and contractors. “In Vermont, businesses are also considered consumers,” Clark said.

Alan Couch, of Alan I. Couch Construction of Ludlow, said he attended the meeting to better understand how to navigate repairs to his own workspace, which he said was flooded with 8 inches of water. Even though Couch was pre-approved for an SBA loan, “we don’t want to over-borrow,” he said. “We didn’t have contents coverage; the assessment is going to be substantial. We are looking to elevate our building above whatever the new elevation will be … at the end of the day I don’t want to raise my house 4 feet and then find out it should have been raised 4.5 feet.”

Sen. Clarkson said that the Vermont Bar Association has gathered pro bono lawyers to offer affected business owners up to 10 hours of free work. Attorney General Clark added that she prefers to call this “low bono” work, as the attorneys do a certain amount for free, then will continue to work at a rate lower than they typically charge.

• See also: Law school offers free help to businesses navigating FEMA, SBA, seeks volunteer attorneys

“That’s a part of the Community Navigator pilot program,” McDonnell said, and she invited the public to contact the Attorney General’s office with related questions. “We can at the very least coordinate to get you in the right place you need to be.”

“Small business owners are the core of what we do in Vermont,” Clark said.

Earlier in the day, Clark visited the Londonderry Village Market, which her family founded and operated for more than 60 years as Clark’s Quality Foods IGA.  It was sold three years ago to Associated Grocers of New England, a co-op and wholesale distributor.

As she walked the aisles, many employees lined up to greet her, including Meat Manager Terry Merrow. He said his sister Peggy “was like a proud mamma when you won” the election.