James Galloway
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EVANSVILLE —
James Galloway “knew what he was doing,” when he allegedly scammed area residents out of tens of thousands of dollars for the past few years, Evansville Police Department spokeswoman Karen Kajmowicz said.
He allegedly told residents he would fix roofs and gutters, replace sidings and walkways, and paint houses and garages. For those who wrote checks for thousands of dollars, sometimes he would start jobs, other times he’d never show his face again, police officials said. He allegedly schemed more than $40,000 from at least 30 victims.
“And that number is low because many whom I have talked to know of neighbors who didn’t file police reports,” said Detective Trudy Day of the financial crimes unit at the Evansville Police Department.
Galloway, 49, was arrested after Day interviewed him Tuesday morning, and he sits in Vanderburgh County Jail without bond. He’s been preliminarily charged with home improvement fraud.
He was arrested on similar charges by Warrick County Sheriff’s Office deputies on July 23 and has three open cases there. Day said she will send about seven “prosecutable” cases to the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office this week.
Day said Galloway’s alleged acts of fraud stem back to 2008.
Some of the cases involve full payments, but no work. On April 15, a 63-year-old woman entered into a $2,900 contract with Galloway to for gutter, carpet, paint and other work.
The contract said “paid in full,” according to a police report, but the contract was verbally amended several times and the woman ended up paying some $9,800.
“No work has ever been done on (the victim’s) home or property,” his arrest affidavit said.
There were some cases were some work was done. In January 2010, one police report said, a 74-year-old Evansville man said he was satisfied with a paint job Galloway did. But that’s all Galloway allegedly did and he reportedly charged him more than what was in the original contract.
According to the report, Galloway received $7,200 but told the man that he would only charge him $1,200 for the paint job and repay the $6,000.
To this day, Galloway only repaid $800, the report indicated.
It wasn’t easy building a case against Galloway, police said, because most of his contracts were open ended: He didn’t have a completion date in them, so he technically had forever to finish a job.
And even for contracts that did, police had to prove that fraud took place, which is a criminal matter when the cases could easily be seen as contract disputes, which are a civil matter.
“It was a pattern over time that was identified,” said Day. “We began finding the cases that we needed to find that were prosecutable.”
Galloway is scheduled to appear in Vanderburgh County Superior Court at 8:30 a.m. today.