SPECIAL NOTICE - Solicitation and Recruitment

Each spring and summer we see an increase in door-to-door solicitors and recruiters. If they truly are soliciting and are not a non-profit they need to have a valid Fairfax County solicitor's license on them. Click HERE to see a sample of a solictor's license. If you are wary of the person you can always call the non-emergency number 703-691-2131 and have an officer come out and identify the person.

Neighborhood Safety Forum Update

Scam Alert!

Crime Prevention Tip

Change the lightbulbs in your front porch light to include a "dusk 'til dawn" sensor insert. They are simple inexpensive inserts you can get at any home improvement store. They simply screw into the socket and then the bulb screws into them. The inserts automatically turns on the light when it starts to get dark and turns it off when it starts to get light out. This way your house is always well lit and you don't have to remember to turn on or off the light. You should also add the inserts to any lights you may have around your garage and on your back porch.

If you already have a light that has the "dusk 'til dawn" sensor on it then you're ahead of the curve!!

TARGETING THE ELDERLY - A Pestilence of Human 'Woodchucks'

It starts with trimming a tree. Then maybe a gutter needs fixing, or a chimney repairing. And within weeks, more than $100,000 is gone.

Police call them "woodchucks," men who cruise the older neighborhoods of Northern Virginia looking for elderly women living alone who can be conned or manipulated or intimidated into paying ridiculous sums for little or no work. In Fairfax County, police estimate that 500 people a year are victimized by unlicensed contractors who come back day after day, demanding $7,000 to fix a leaky sink or $3,000 to fill some shallow holes in the back yard.

"I was so taken for a ride," said a Falls Church woman, 64, who did not want to be identified out of fear. She paid about $140,000 in slightly more than two months to a crew of men from Culpeper County, where many of the woodchucks live, for barely noticeable repairs. "I was very naive."

Police in Northern Virginia said the scammers cruise through more established neighborhoods, ones with big trees, fewer children and maybe more slightly declining houses. They look for older sedans, such as Cadillacs or Crown Victorias, with handicapped license plates or hang tags. No SUVs or child seats.
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The scheme often starts with a legitimate job, possibly performed well, such as trimming tree limbs, said Detective Michael Cole of the Fairfax financial crimes unit. And, Cole noted, if a homeowner agrees to pay an outrageous fee for a service, there's no crime as long as the service is performed.

It's often hard for police to document what work was done, and elderly homeowners can't climb a roof to confirm work, or can't remember what was agreed to and what wasn't, Cole said. Many don't report the crime, out of embarrassment or fear.

The age of the victims sometimes presents a problem to police and a boon to the criminals, because the victims might not remember how much money they paid or what services they agreed to pay for. Checks are made out to different people, and sometimes the woodchucks drive the victim to the bank and she cashes checks for them, police said.

Maryland authorities said they have seen different frauds involving senior citizens. Montgomery County police said they had not seen the particular woodchuck scam, but they have noted that one-time contractor schemes such as driveway resurfacing, door-to-door soliciting and phony utility workers tend to target the elderly.

In Prince George's County, police said they have seen occasional scams with elderly victims, and police and community officials meet regularly with senior citizen groups to apprise them of potential frauds or threats. District police could not comment Friday.

Police in Northern Virginia have started targeting the scammers, and last week the accused leader of one crew pleaded guilty in Fairfax Circuit Court to defrauding a 78-year-old Springfield area woman. Dwayne Wharton, 32, of Culpeper agreed to repay the woman $30,500, but prosecutors said he and his co-workers extracted about $130,000 from her in a few months in fall 2007.

Wharton's attorney, Jerry Phillips, said the complaints made against Wharton were merely civil disputes over the quality of work done. "I can present just as many satisfied customers as they can unsatisfied customers," Phillips said.

The day before his plea, Wharton was arrested again in Vienna. He was paid for repairing an elderly woman's roof, but Sgt. J.C. Wickes of the Vienna police showed photos of roof shingles that still had moss and mold on them. Phillips said Wharton "totally disputes that." A Pestilence of Human 'Woodchucks'

In February, police in Fairfax City arrested a similar crew from Culpeper for promising repairs, not doing them and allegedly collecting more than $50,000. Charges against three people are pending. Police in Arlington also are investigating the woodchucks for similar scams, and as the dollar figures climb, federal investigations might begin.

"With our demographics becoming a bit more grayer," said Lt. Gun Lee of the Fairfax County police, "this is a lot more sensitive of a crime. These guys are really taking advantage of these poor folks."

The scam is not necessarily new, and the term "woodchucks" goes back so far in police lore that some aren't sure where it came from, though it's possibly related to a tree service that had that name on a mobile wood-chipper. Although the crews can make big money fast, police said they spend it just as fast on drugs such as oxycontin and methamphetamine, creating a need to go back to victims for more money. One woodchuck, arrested on an unrelated charge, called one of his victims in hopes she would post his bail.

It started with the supposed need to take down some trees for an 80-year-old woman in the Fairfax City area, her daughter said recently. She asked that her family's name not be printed so that her mother isn't victimized again. The woodchucks kept coming back to her mother, taking down trees or spraying for bugs. "She kept saying, 'I thought it was legitimate,' " the daughter said.
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Then they began repeatedly repairing an overhang at the house. "They would fix it, then break it so they'd have to come back." They would fix gutters, the woman said, then block them and return to repair them.

Finally, in September, a bank manager called the daughter and said, "Did you realize your mom's been in here a lot lately cashing numerous checks?" In two months, she had written $65,300 in checks to "cash," and an additional $26,300 to five people. But she could not say what work had and hadn't been done, and police couldn't prosecute.

A neighbor across the street from the Falls Church victim grew suspicious of the woodchucks and chased them off, the victim there said. She said men came back every day demanding money, once claiming she needed to write more checks because earlier ones had bounced. "I was quite frightened," she said. And the work? "They hadn't done a daggone bit."

Fairfax Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jeremy Balint said that once Wharton or his friends found a vulnerable woman, they would "spread the word" in Culpeper and Madison counties. "In that way, a single homeowner was victimized by several different groups of woodchucks," Balint said.

Lee said residents must ask anyone who knocks on their door, " 'Do you have a solicitor's license?' If not, call 911. We'll come and check it out."