A Florida woman who is trying to sell her house was flabbergasted when she returned home one evening before Christmas to find that someone had removed her entire driveway.
“I didn’t understand at that time why this person was doing this,” Amanda Brochu told Fox News. “Now I’m left with dirt.”
Brochu believes she got caught in the middle of a scam that targets contractors, and now she’s trying to warn other homeowners.
The single mother of two listed her Orange County home for sale in early December. She was under contract to buy a different home in the area, and needed the money for the down payment, she said.
Soon, her son told her people had shown up at the house and started measuring the driveway. Brochu said about half a dozen different contractors came by over the course of a few days, often while she was gone.
She caught one of them and asked what he was doing. He told her a man named Andre had requested a new driveway. Brochu told him Andre wasn’t the owner of the house and asked him not to return. Then she called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to report that a stranger was sending contractors to her home.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office confirmed the Dec. 13 report and told Fox News that a deputy made contact with Andre, who said he accidentally provided the wrong address.
But on Dec. 21, Brochu’s driveway disappeared.
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“I was in unbelievable, like, utter shock,” Rocki Sanchez, Brochu’s real estate agent, told local news station WFTV. “I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never had this happen to myself or anyone in our office.”
An image from Brochu’s Ring camera showed someone ripping up the driveway using some sort of construction machinery.
“I was at work as it was happening,” Brochu said. “Then my son came home and saw it. And then I came home from work, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God.’ But they were already gone.”
After WFTV shared the baffling story, Brochu said contractors reached out to her and said it seemed she’d become a casualty of an overpayment scam.
In the scheme, a scammer pretends to own a house, usually one for sale or likely to be vacant, and asks contractors for an estimate for exterior work. Then the scammer mails a check or sends another form of payment in excess of the price, asks for a refund for the extra money and, once they get it, cancels the payment.
“But in this case, I got in the middle of this scam because my driveway got taken out,” Brochu said.
The sheriff’s office is “still trying to determine whether there was a criminal violation,” the spokesperson told Fox News.
“The homeowner did the right thing in this case by reporting the suspicious activity to law enforcement,” they wrote in an email. “We advise all residents to report anyone who comes onto their property without their permission or attempts to perform work they have not requested to call their local law enforcement agency.”
Brochu spent the holidays stressed about how she would pay for a new driveway and get her house sold. But the community sprang into action, donating more than the $10,000 she was quoted to replace the concrete in a matter of days. Then, a separate contractor offered to replace the driveway for free, so Brochu has now pledged to donate the money raised to a local charity.
“People came out for me when I was in need, so now I just want to go ahead and give that back,” she said.
She also hopes her story serves as a warning for others.
“There’s scammers out there targeting for-sale homes because they think it’s vacant, not knowing that I was still living in the home,” she said.
To hear from Brochu, click here.
