DELRAY BEACH— These silver-haired sleuths don’t go to crime scenes or carry guns. Some don’t even leave their beds. But Florida’s growing army of “Senior Sleuths” and other elderly volunteers increasingly are working behind the scenes to go after people preying on their own.
The Seniors vs. Crime project, which is expanding in South Florida, has thousands of volunteers who do the unglamorous work of investigating complaints from elderly consumers.
Most are retirees who spend their time on the phone in one of the program’s 40 offices around the state. On more interesting days, they’ll go undercover as shoppers to stores suspected of overcharging customers. They sometimes do get more exciting assignments, just not that often.
Take, for example, the 83-year-old Senior Sleuth who took part in a covert operation in the Tampa area in 2001 that led to the arrest of a water-purification system salesman on charges of grand theft.
A hidden camera captured the salesman using scare tactics in the sales pitch.
Last year, the savvy sleuths recovered $208,000 for victims in Palm Beach and Broward counties, up from $175,099 in 2009.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office oversees the program, which is screening potential sleuths to run its newest office, tentatively set to open in September in Cooper City. The state’s first office opened in Delray Beach in 2001.
A retired schoolteacher, a real estate agent and a police officer have joined the ranks of Senior Sleuths at the Seniors vs. Crime office in Coral Springs. They go after businesses that rip off the elderly, whether it’s calling up a roofer who took a deposit and disappeared or getting a phone company to repay a customer it overbilled.
Marvin Badler, 72, volunteers at least once a week at the cramped office in Delray Beach. The retired private investigator wears a green polo shirt with the “Seniors vs. Crime” logo, and keeps his long white hair in a ponytail. He takes his job seriously, meeting with victims and reviewing several cases a week.
“A lot of the senior citizens have been taken advantage of,” said Badler, who lives in Delray Beach. “If I can help anybody with an investigation, I enjoy it.”
Badler spends most of his time on the phone trying to get contractors and companies to give money back to seniors who didn’t get what they paid for. Most are small, civil disputes, but more flagrant abuses end up on the desk of the attorney general.
A recent victory for Seniors vs. Crime was the July arrest of Robert Hoffman, owner of Rolladen, a well-established hurricane shutter company based in Hallandale Beach.
Rolladen allegedly required customers to pay up to 80 percent of the cost of the shutters upfront, but in many cases never delivered or installed them. The company reportedly received more than $600,000 in deposits for the shutters.
Badler and others at Seniors vs. Crime reviewed numerous complaints against Rolladen and flagged them for the Attorney General’s Office in Tallahassee.
In July, Attorney General Pam Bondi sued Hoffman for practicing deceptive and unfair trade practices. About a week later, the Broward Sheriff’s Office arrested him on charges of running an organized scheme to defraud and unlicensed contracting.
Tom Laird, of Boca Raton, said he tried for months to get Rolladen to repay the $12,700 he paid for hurricane shutters that never arrived. In May, he contacted Seniors vs. Crime after hearing that the sleuths had recovered some money for other customers. At that point, though, Hoffman already was under investigation and the sleuths could not reach him.
“They did everything they could. They were able to get my case to the AG’s office,” said Laird, 67, a commercial real estate investor and retired university professor. “I just hope this man is brought to justice.”
In rare cases, Senior Sleuths go undercover to help prove wrongdoing. One of their first major operations involved sending volunteers into Tire Kingdom stores to get rid of their used tires. The company was accused of overcharging consumers — collecting a $2 disposal fee instead of the state’s $1 fee
http://liarcatchers.com/civil_investigations.html
