‘Someone you could trust’

Home improvement contractor bilks customers out of millions, jumps bail

Friday, Aug. 11, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Photo illustration by Dan Gross⁄The Gazette Craig Oliver, pictured in this wanted poster from the U.S. Department of Justice, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for scamming homeowners of more than $2.5 million, but he has since jumped bail.

Balding, bearded and middle-aged, Oliver wasn’t as pushy as some home-improvement contractors. He could be low-key, even nice, homeowners who met him said.

‘‘He was very personable,” said Carol DePrato, who hired Oliver to build a garage at her Riverdale home a couple of years ago.

‘‘He looked and acted like someone you could trust,” said Beth Campolieto Marhanka, who met Oliver about two years ago as he was in the midst of a home improvement project for her mother, Shirley A. Campolieto, and considered him for work on her Springfield, Va., home. ‘‘He talked about how he grew up in the area ... He knew how to connect with people so you trusted him.”

But underneath, there was a different story.

Oliver has a ‘‘long criminal history, involving fraud,” dating to 1982, according to a prosecutor’s legal brief filed in January in a federal court in Alexandria, Va. He is a ‘‘lifelong criminal who will say anything to avoid punishment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert C. Erickson wrote before Oliver was sentenced in January to 20 years in prison for defrauding 68 Maryland and Virginia homeowners out of more than $2.5 million — one of the largest such scams in recent industry history.

‘‘Absent a significant sentence, he is likely to continue to make his living defrauding others,” Erickson added.

But even facing the possibility of such a heavy sentence, Oliver continued to deceive others, including prosecutors who did not ask that Oliver be held without bail and the judge who set bail at $150,000 bail after he pled guilty in October.

In late November, Oliver failed to call pretrial services officer Sherylle Gant as stipulated and then did not show up for a scheduled meeting on Dec. 2. A warrant was issued for his arrest a few days later.

But by that time, he was gone. Along with his wife, Jennifer L. Oliver, who worked for Oliver’s home improvement contracting businesses, he skipped bail — a rare occurrence among white-collar criminals, experts say.

Almost a year later, the fugitive couple has yet to be found.

Some doubt the pair ever will.

‘‘I don’t have much hope of getting my money back,” said DePrato, who lost $60,890.

Trail of deceit

In 2002, Oliver owed more than $400,000 in restitution to previous victims he had defrauded, according to Erickson. But Oliver was still able to incorporate Dominion Building and Construction Corp. and Potomac Building Corp., operating out of his Alexandria residence.

He applied for a contractor’s license with the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation by using a forged signature, then used another contractor’s license, according to a statement signed by Oliver and his attorney, Christopher Cole Finch of Fairfax, as part of a federal plea deal and state records. The other contractor, Robert Jentilucci, represented Dominion Building and had his license revoked for illegally allowing Oliver to use the license in 2004. Jentilucci was also assessed fines of at least $5,000 by Virginia.

Oliver never obtained a license from Virginia himself and the state regulating agency does not have authority to take action against unlicensed contractors such as Oliver, a spokeswoman said. Those matters are handled by criminal agencies, such as the FBI, she said.

Oliver’s attorney, Finch, did not return a call seeking comment.

Oliver also used the licenses of three Maryland companies to obtain work between 2003 and 2005, according to the statement he signed. He made a joint venture offer with Paramount Home Improvements LLC, a Baltimore business that went out of business in 2003, to use Paramount’s license in exchange for paying the company 8 percent of the contracts’ value. Oliver continued to use the license for several months after Paramount went out of business, according to his statement.

Jennifer Grimes, an investigator with the Maryland Home Improvement Commission, which regulates and licenses contractors under the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, helped uncover the scam after several homeowners filed complaints with the state agency. Grimes, who could not be reached for comment, recently won an award from federal officials for her role in the case.

Investigators such as Grimes handle more than 400 cases each year, as the commission fields some 3,000 complaints annually, said Linda Sherman, a spokeswoman for the labor department. ‘‘We are real proud of Jennifer’s work on this case. It says something about the quality of investigators we have,” she said.

In a little more than two years, Oliver took more than $4 million from homeowners and signed contracts worth about $6 million. As part of his plea agreement, he agreed to pay homeowners restitution of $2.55 million, with the top individual payment of $202,000 to one Virginia man. Eleven of the 68 homeowners were from Maryland, including seven properties in Silver Spring. Two of the five claimants who lost the most had homes in Silver Spring.

Officials at the National Association of the Remodeling Industry said they hadn’t heard about a fraud case involving as many homeowners or as much money as this one. The Des Plaines, Ill., organization published an item in its electronic newsletter to members on Oliver, said spokeswoman Gwen Biasi.

‘‘We hope he’s caught,” Biasi said. ‘‘Our members abide by a strict code of ethics, and this case is a poor reflection on the whole industry ... Not all remodelers defraud homeowners, and a great many are just honest businesspeople.”

A ‘cruel’ case

The case of Campolieto was ‘‘especially cruel” since she informed Oliver in late 2003 that she had colon cancer and needed a second surgery, Erickson said. Oliver pressured Campolieto to sign a contract before that surgery, saying, ‘‘Seeing people working around the house will take your mind off of the cancer,” according to an FBI report. Campolieto signed a contract agreeing to spend $80,000 on an addition to her Fairfax home.

By February 2004, Campolieto had given Oliver $72,000 — state officials advise homeowners to not give more than one-third of the contract value before the bulk of the work is completed. But little was completed on the project, and in July 2004, Fairfax inspectors reported that the roof was not up to code and the foundation would have to be jack-hammered to install plumbing. By that time, Oliver was rarely seen around the house.

Campolieto died in June at the age of 60. The ‘‘stress of the situation caused by Oliver” had taken a ‘‘serious toll on her health,” the FBI reported in late 2004.

Campolieto had found Oliver from an Internet site run by ServiceMagic, a Golden, Colo., company that links homeowners and ‘‘prescreened and customer-rated” contractors. She also checked the company with Fairfax County. ‘‘It wasn’t like she didn’t do her homework,” Marhanka said.

ServiceMagic officials could not be reached for comment about their contractor screening process and how Oliver was listed on the site.

‘‘While we can’t guarantee the workmanship of a service professional, we are here to help your project go smoothly,” the company’s Internet site says. ‘‘We’ll even provide up to $500 of additional labor toward making the job right.”

Five hundred dollars would not make a dent in covering what it will cost to fix the botched job at Campolieto’s home, which is still not completed, Marhanka said. It took her mother more than a year to get more money and find another contractor to work on the job.

‘‘We are currently waiting on life insurance money to pay for the rest of the work,” Marhanka said. ‘‘It’s just really a shame the way he took advantage of my mom at a time she was so sick. Her dream was to complete the addition, and she never got to see it done.”

In DePrato’s case in Riverdale, Oliver’s dirty work has been cleaned up by another contractor. Oliver was referred to her through a friend, who was also defrauded, DePrato said.

‘‘I did look up his license and check with the Better Business Bureau,” DePrato said. ‘‘Everything checked out. I don’t know what else I could have done.”

Other Maryland victims of Oliver had little to say.

‘‘I just hope he is caught,” said Paul Doraiswamy, who lost almost $100,000 through a project on a Silver Spring residence.

Bail expectations

White-collar criminals such as Oliver tend to get bail more often than those who commit other crimes, especially if there is a good chance their cases will be successfully appealed, said Ellen S. Podgor, a law professor and associate dean of faculty development and distance education at Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg, Fla. She also teaches courses and has written books on white-collar crime, and is co-editor of the ‘‘White-Collar Crime Prof Blog.”

‘‘Their reliability in showing back up is high,” Podgor said. ‘‘There are not many cases where they don’t show up.”

But with more white-collar convicts receiving harsher sentences, that may change, she said. Prosecutors can ask that defendants be held without bail, and judges can issue such a ruling on their own, said Podgor, a former deputy prosecutor and defense lawyer. Former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell, who was convicted for tax evasion, recently was denied bail, she noted.

The flight in white-collar cases is usually before trials, not afterward, said Peter J. Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit who co-edits the blog with Podgor.

‘‘In most cases, the courts permit the defendant to remain free until sentencing,” said Henning, who has worked on white-collar crime cases for the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission and has written books and taught courses on white-collar crime. ‘‘Bail pending appeal is usually permitted more in white-collar cases.”

Should prosecutors ask for bail to be withheld in white-collar cases more often? ‘‘It’s a tough call,” Podgor said. ‘‘It’s a rarity when people convicted of white-collar crimes flee ... It depends on the circumstances.”

In cases where the defendant has a history of deceit, prosecutors should make such requests, said Peter Goldmann, editor and publisher of the White-Collar Crime Fighter, a Ridgefield, Conn., publication.

‘‘They definitely do victimize innocent victims and should be punished as severely as those who inflict physical suffering on their victims,” Goldmann said.

As for Oliver’s case, the U.S. Marshals Service and FBI have a wanted poster out on him, though he is not among the most serious 110 cases — most of which involve murder and drug trafficking. One of the few white-collar criminals on the serious list, John Ruffo of New York, disappeared in 1998 after failing to report to a New Jersey prison to start serving a 17-year sentence for his role in defrauding banks of $353 million.

Federal spokesmen declined to comment on whether they had obtained any good leads on Oliver’s whereabouts, what investigators were doing, such as using a forensic accountant, or if they had contacted Oliver’s parents in North Carolina and other relatives.

Those victimized said they were trying to stay optimistic, but it was hard.

‘‘I’m not holding my breath,” DePrato said.

They’ve learned some lessons the hard way.

‘‘You can’t really trust anyone, no matter how nice he or she seems,” Marhanka said.