lawmakers have refused<\/a> to create either a licensing or registration system for roofers to make it a lot harder to take the money and run.<\/p>\nAggressive tactics<\/p>\n
Rubinsky, according to court documents, was a master of this. According to the A.G.\u2019s lawsuit, Rubinsky\u2019s tool kit contained repeated phone calls and text messages to pressure homeowners into signing contracts.<\/p>\n
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Sometimes he\u2019d pressure prospects into signing and they wouldn\u2019t. But then he\u2019d act like they did,\u00a0texted them \u201cat all hours\u201d and demanded money.
On one occasion, a \u201csalesperson refused repeated requests to leave, and the consumer threatened to call 911 before the salesperson finally departed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Delays and excuses<\/p>\n
He\u2019d delay and delay. For one customer who had already paid, he promised to do the job in August, then September, October, November and December. The work was never done.<\/p>\n
Excuses he used were bad weather, unavailable crews, injuries on other jobs and promises of a date to be set soon.<\/p>\n
Eventually, calls and texts would go unanswered.<\/p>\n
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What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n
Victims report that the U.S. Attorney\u2018s Office has issued about 30 subpoenas. The feds appear ready to jump on the case. The FBI declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Victims told me they fear they won\u2019t recover any of their money. They say they are hoping that at least he\u2019ll get some jail time.<\/p>\n
I was unable to reach\u00a0Rubinsky.<\/p>\n
But I did hear his voice on a recording played for me by a customer.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNo one in this country understands roofing and the process better than I do,\u201d he said. \u201cMy goal is always to build quickly because that\u2019s how I make money. That\u2019s how I make my customers happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
It now appears the legal system will decide his fate. But until Texas requires roofers to be licensed or registered, homeowners remain only one signature away from becoming the next names on a victim spreadsheet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Attorney General accuses a North Texas roofer of fraud after 42 homeowners reported losing nearly $500,000 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-363571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}