ISLAMORADA, Fla. – Deputies in the Florida Keys booked a man into jail Monday evening after they accused him of acting as an unlicensed contractor and ripping off a senior couple on a driveway job back in 2022.
According to an arrest warrant, William Esau Stanley, 24, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, was first taken into custody in Portland, Maine on April 8. The warrant states that Stanley’s father, Cornelius, has a “conviction history of exploiting elderly homeowners in several Northeastern states.”
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A Monroe County Sheriff’s Office investigator wrote in the warrant that on Feb. 24, 2022, Stanley approached an 81-year-old man with dementia outside of a rental home he owned with his wife on South Coconut Palm Boulevard in Islamorada, offering to resurface the driveway.
Neither the man nor his wife were given quotes or signed any contract, but Stanley, claiming to be with a company called “RCC,” got to work immediately, deputies said.
Stanley only gave the couple the price after finishing the job, the warrant states. Authorities said he demanded $26,000.
Deputies said the average cost of resurfacing a driveway of a similar size was only $3,000.
According to the warrant, the man’s wife told Stanley that she couldn’t afford $26,000 and both parties agreed on $10,000, “which is still triple the amount a reasonable person would pay.”
Authorities said she wrote the check out to Cornelius Stanley. It’s not clear if he will be facing charges in the case.
The investigator wrote that the woman “did mention she was hesitant to pay but felt intimidated by (William) Stanley, so she wrote the check.”
“Later in the day after speaking to her son regarding the job, (she) called her bank to cancel the check, which she thought she did in time, but at a later date found out the check had been cashed,” the warrant states.
Deputies said the woman never got a receipt and an Islamorada code compliance officer later told her that some of the work was done on an easement and that portion would need to be removed to be in compliance.
The village also fined her, the warrant states.
“Stanley did not verify the boundaries of the driveway prior to beginning the job,” the investigator wrote.
Islamorada’s public works director would later tell deputies that he saw the driveway work being done on Feb. 24 and asked Stanley for the permit and “was informed it was located in another off-scene truck which the man told (the official) his father was driving.”
The village official, however, “knew they did not have a valid permit,” deputies said.
“A search through Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s online services yielded no current contracting licenses for William Stanley nor the business ‘RCC’ within Monroe County or the State of Florida,” the investigator wrote.
Stanley is facing charges of elderly exploitation and operating as an unlicensed contractor.
Records show he posted a $25,000 bond and was released from MCSO’s Key West jail facility early Tuesday morning.