A Florida homeowner has spoken out after she said her driveway was vandalized without her knowledge while she was out of town.
Amanda Brochu, who recently put her Orange County home on the market, returned from a trip to find “just dirt” where her driveway used to be. Now he’s telling PEOPLE others should be on the lookout for the scam, which he says is actually more widespread than most homeowners think.
“It’s called an overpayment scam and it’s for contractors,” Brochu tells PEOPLE of her experience, in which someone she didn’t know authorized a contractor to destroy her driveway. “In this case, the contractors didn’t check who owned the house and took out my driveway.”
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Brochu detailed the unfortunate sequence of events on the GoFundMe she started to help raise money to cover the cost of replacing the driveway.
“About a week after I put my home up for sale, I started getting calls and people coming to my home, trying to measure my driveway and stating that the landlord had sent them to replace the driveway,” she wrote in a message shared with the online fundraiser. , which has raised more than $15,000 but is no longer accepting donations.
“This is, of course, impossible since I own the house and have never needed a new driveway,” she continued. “As I was getting ready to go out of town for my birthday and Christmas with my kids, I received a doorbell to say someone had been outside my house, destroying my driveway right before my eyes.”
After she reported the incident to the police, they tried to call a person named “Andre” who was looking for work, but the man hung up on the officers.
“The deputy made contact with the man, who told him he mistakenly provided the wrong address and would correct it,” the Orange County Sheriff’s Office told PEOPLE in a statement. The sheriff’s office added, “At this time, our investigative unit is still trying to determine if a crime occurred.”
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Brochu was not the only person surprised by the disappearance of the driveway. Rocki Sanchez, Brochu’s real estate agent, says she was initially shocked by the story, but then learned from other colleagues in the industry that they had heard of similar incidents.
“I’ve had calls from other performers and fellow agents saying that this kind of thing is more common than we can imagine,” Sanchez tells PEOPLE. “It’s not just homeowners who are targeted, but also contractors, who take on the job without doing their full due diligence, so the scammer ends up taking advantage of them.”
Brochu adds, “They probably realized they were being scammed with a fake check, so they just left my driveway like dirt.”
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After the incident happened, Brochu, who was under contract to buy a new home, said on a GoFundMe page that she needed donations because the cost to replace the driveway would be “astronomical.”
After calling the company to get an estimate, Brochu learned it would cost $10,000 — money she didn’t have.
But a local company later offered to install a new driveway at no cost to Brocha, who told PEOPLE that she will now donate all the money she raised to an Orlando-area nonprofit that helps underserved people with disabilities.
And now, she shares some words of wisdom about her experience. “If anyone is going through this while selling their house, make sure you notify the police, get all the details you can, and let your neighbors know they’re looking for you,” says Brochu.
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Source: HIS Education