It was the perfect set up for a scam.
Alfred Whitaker’s backyard on Thames Drive near Christmas Hill Park was in dire need of a good pruning, and his wallet was in need of a good deal. And, being a trusting 77-year-old man, Whitaker and his 74-year-old wife Marlene wanted to help the charming, doe-eyed door-to-door pruner who gave them a great discount – as long as they made a deposit in advance.
“It was too good to be true,” Whitaker said.
When it was all over, Whitaker was out $350 and his overgrown trees hadn’t been touched.
On April 12, Whitaker heard a knock on their door. Whitaker opened the door, something he said he wouldn’t normally do for a stranger, except he saw that the man on his doorstep, who drove a blue Toyota truck, was dressed in an official-looking orange vest with reflective stripes.
The man, who gave the name Mitchell DeRosa, said he would trim the two giant, twisting trees in the Whitaker’s backyard, an Arizona Ash and a Camphor tree, for $450. Whitaker thought that price sounded excellent considering a man gave him a $1,200 estimate a few weeks prior for the same job.
To get the discount, the man told them, they needed to pay $100 up front, for the “dumping fee.”
Whitaker said he was hesitant about making a deposit in advance, but that his wife wanted to help the man, who appeared to be desperate for work.
So Whitaker cut a check for $100, and the man agreed to come back the next morning.
The man cashed the check immediately, and signed the check as “M. Oliveira,” a different name than he gave Whitaker. He did come back the following morning (an hour-and-a-half later than the agreed time), borrowed the Whitaker’s pruners and ladder, and spent a few minutes pruning a small cherry tree in the backyard, which was not a tree that Whitaker had hired him to prune.
Whitaker, who was not home when this happened, said he was starting to feel suspicious about the so-called tree pruner, so he headed to the bank to cancel the $100 check he wrote the day before.
But his wife called him while he was at the bank, and said DeRosa (or Oliveira) told her the axle on his truck broke and that he needed $250 to fix it before he could finish the job. So instead of canceling the check, Whitaker withdrew cash to pay the man to fix his axle.
After he gave him the cash, Whitaker never saw the tree pruner again.
Whitaker might not be the only person in the South County and surrounding areas who has been scammed. On Yelp.com, an online business directory with reviews from real customers, Michael Oliveira of “Oliveira Landscaping” has four one-star reviews.
“This guy is a thief of the worst kind,” a reviewer from Salinas wrote on Nov. 11, 2011. “He preys on elderly folks by taking their money and not completing the work. He says he’ll ‘discount’ the work if paid in advance and if paid in cash. It’s sad that folks will pay anyone in advance, but many elderly folks are watching their budgets and are overly trusting.”
“Watch out for Mike Oliveira!! He’s a total con man!” wrote another reviewer from Morgan Hill on April 18, in all caps.
Whitaker said that Oliveira is a clean-shaven, middle-aged Latino man about 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs about 140 pounds.
All four Yelp reviewers said that Oliveira came to their door, charged them for landscaping and then never returned and would not return calls, and all reviewers said they had notified police. Two of the reviews were written on April 18, the same week Whitaker reported the incident to the Gilroy police.
George Sandoval, Gilroy painting contractor who has known Michael Oliveira and his two brothers since they were young boys, said that the Oliveira brothers have been scamming South Valley communities for nearly two decades.
“Mike went into the landscaping scamming business, and his brothers went into the painting scamming business,” Sandoval said.
Sandoval said one summer about ten years ago, he picked up three jobs that an Oliveira had charged for without completing. Once, Michael Oliveira even came to his door, and asked him to make a deposit for some yardwork. Sandoval turned him away, as he knew his routine.
Sandoval believes that Oliveira is a real gardener with regular clients, and scams on the side.
“He’s definitely into scamming the elderly, that’s (the Oliveira brother’s) main game,” Sandoval said.
Carolyn Rosenblatt, lawyer and founder of Help With Elders, an agency that combats elder abuse in San Francisco, said that there are $3.2 billion worth of senior citizen financial scams every year in the US.
“Elders need to be aware that there are people who see them as prey,” Rosenblatt said.
But as far as police are concerned, Oliveira isn’t a criminal.
Because people are being ripped-off within a contractual agreement, the matter is a civil dispute between customer and contractor.
“I called the Morgan Hill police department to report the theft but they said it is not their business and they would not respond,” wrote a Morgan Hill reviewer on July 2, 2010.
Morgan Hill police said that no police reports were made for Michael Oliveira regarding tree pruning because they believe the incidents to be civil and recommended those who were scammed to follow up with the District Attorney’s Office.
Whitaker contacted the GPD on April 16 and as of Monday, he believes that the police are conducting a “full on” investigation of the incident.
But Sgt. Chad Gallacinao said that no action was taken, because the matter was civil, not criminal.
“We’re not calling it a scam, because that would be premature,” Gallacinao said last week. “When people enter into a contract, it becomes a civil situation.”
Gallacinao compared the incident to someone paying for furniture at a store and never getting it delivered.
“Just because that store doesn’t deliver a bed doesn’t make it a crime,” he said.
Gallacinao said that for the pruner to be charged with a crime, police would have to see “intent to defraud,” and with just one recent incident, that can’t be proven.
When asked if he knew whether or not police investigating the case, Whitaker furrowed his brow and tilted his head.
“Well, they told me they were, and why wouldn’t they?” Whitaker said. “Why wouldn’t this be criminal? This guy is a crook. He is King-Con of this town.”
