Last month, Paige Batten was quite surprised to learn that her driveway had been removed. Having not requested that this be done, the initial question was “Who steals a driveway?”.

Not long after, some answers came in. The driveway was taken out by a legitimate contractor who had been tricked into performing a job the homeowner had not ordered. It seems Batten’s vacant home was just a useful location for a scam, one that involved a whole lot of unnecessary labor. Here’s Donnie McSears, owner of McSears Concrete Finishing:

“…he reached out to me and wanted the driveway removed and said figure me a price. He said I’m gonna send you 50% before you get started, so I’m still waiting on my first check I haven’t gotten anything. He also wanted me to pay a $2000 furniture bill for him,” said McSears.

I guess the question now is “Who scammed a concrete contractor?”. Also, “What exactly was the scam here?”. It’s not spelled out very well, but I believe this was a form of overpayment scam, where the criminal overpays for a job with a bad check and then quickly gets money back from the recipient (or I guess has them pay off a “furniture bill”, which strikes me as both extra suspicious and likely to have more of a paper trail). Only later does the victim learn that the original payment was fraudulent, and they’re out whatever cash they sent away.

There’s gotta be an easier scam out there though, one that doesn’t involve making multiple laborers do back-breaking work to steal a random person’s driveway. And then, because the victim is a decent person, do back-breaking work to return a random person’s driveway as well. I don’t know if McSears actually sent any money to the scammer, but his company is certainly out the time spent removing and then restoring a driveway at no charge.