Contractor Pleads Guilty to Long List of Infractions

Wednesday, November 22, 2017 | 0

An unlicensed home improvement contractor accused of defrauding customers, insurance companies and the workers' compensation system pleaded guilty to 42 charges in Salem Superior Court on Monday, The Salem News reports.

Among other infractions, Jaime Ford, 49, is accused of:

• Buttering up a woman in her 80s in order to take on a construction job, then botching the job in spectacular fashion, leaving only the shell of a home and piles of asbestos-ridden construction debris, while using the woman's down payment to buy a Cadillac Escalade. 
• Defrauding Travelers Insurance by claiming he was injured while working for his brother's demolition company. Travelers covered a $100,000 operation for Ford and paid him benefits in accordance with his alleged $250,000 salary. Ford had actually forged a W-2 form in order to claim that salary, prosecutor Philip Mallard said; the brother's entire company made less than $250,000 per year. 
• Defrauding Liberty Mutual Insurance of $50,000 by convincing a customer to report that equipment had been stolen from a Cambridge job site. 
• Falsely advertising his unlicensed home improvement contracting companies, JFA Services LLC and Home Solutions, as licensed contractors. 

The charges include felony larceny, insurance fraud, forgery, home improvement fraud, violation of state asbestos regulations, violation of state building codes, making false statements under oath, identity fraud, workers' compensation fraud, obtaining signatures by false pretense, conspiracy and making a false report of a crime. 

Ford faces up to four years in prison at his sentencing hearing in January.