Multiple women report having been attempted victims of an asphalt paving scam this summer in Ulster County.

When you live in the sort of rural place where doors go routinely unlocked, having strangers stop by unannounced can be unsettling. This was the case for Melissa Neely in High Falls.

Earlier this summer, Neely heard a knock on the door of her small cottage. Sometimes a political canvasser or a Jehovah’s Witness stops by uninvited, but it’s rare. Neely was in her pajamas and had a house guest. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She said to her friend, who happened to be male, “Can you do me a favor and step out on the porch and see what’s going on?”

The male friend obliged, then was outside for so long that Neely got dressed to join him. In front of her home, she met a clean-cut young man in his 20s explaining that he was paving a driveway around the corner, had extra supply he needed to get rid of, and wanted to bring it to her house at a low cost.

Neely rents, but the house could use a new driveway. She asked how much the job would cost. The answer? Between two and three thousand dollars

“I laughed,” she said. “The last driveway dropped here was $800.”

She told him — and his friend waiting in a white pick-up truck with no professional lettering on it — to move on down the road.

Just outside New Paltz, Jessica Bernstein was also approached by would-be pavers recently, but not the same ones. Her early morning knock on the door was also courtesy of a clean-cut young man in his 20s, but he drove a dark truck. “My dogs are going bonkers and it’s 7:30 a.m. I open my window and lean out: ‘Can I help you?’”

She saw a guy wearing a hat with the words “black top” on it in cursive and the sort of reflective vest that screams town highway department. “He said, ‘We are in the neighborhood doing driveways and are wondering if you are interested,’” Bernstein recalled. She declined and asked him to leave.

Bernstein, like Neely, lives in a house that’s easy to see from the road. So does Denise Fryburg, in Marbletown. Earlier this summer she was doing yardwork when two young men backed their truck into her driveway. They told her they had just finished a big paving job in Rosendale and had leftover asphalt. Could they pave her driveway?

The guy said it would be a “good price,” then under his breath added it was $5 a square foot. “That’s $3,000!” said Fryberg, appalled by an unannounced visitor who thought she wouldn’t do this quick math. She asked him for his card, but he didn’t have one. “I said, ‘Well, put one in the mailbox.’ I never heard from them again.”

These experiences were likely what’s referred to as an “asphalt paving” or “seal coat” scam. Summer is high season for it, and it’s exactly what Neely, Fryburg and Bernstein describe: Workers show up at homes visible from the road with driveways that aren’t in great shape. They say they are doing a job nearby and have extra material to sell at a good price. What happens next could be that the product isn’t what is promised, that the workers take cash and flee, or that homes are being cased for a burglary.

Paving scams are not just a local phenomenon. They are on the Better Business Bureau’s radar, and the New York Attorney General’s office took legal action against someone running an asphalt paving scam in Binghamton in 2020. Ulster County Consumer Affairs, a division of the District Attorney’s Office, put out an alert on the scams in April.

“We try to put that out every spring and fall,” said Patrick Long, senior consumer advocate. “It’s an ongoing issue. We try to warn people ahead of time. They do the job and when they are done they ask for a lot more money. Sometimes the material is cheap and it washes away.” 

Long has handled complaints where a homeowner balked at paying extra. “They said, ‘I don’t have that much money on hand,’ and the worker offers to drive them to the bank. That has happened.” 

To avoid being scammed, Long’s general rule of thumb is to not do business with anyone who randomly shows up — for paving, tree removal, roof repair, anything. He urges consumers to always get a job scope in writing. This written document must include the name, phone number, and address of the business you are hiring. Without it, it’s one person’s word against the other and there isn’t any price cap. 

“If you wind up taking this person to small claims court, you have to have their address,” he said.

The Ulster County Sheriff’s Office did not return interview requests, and the New Paltz police didn’t take the issue seriously when Bernstein called them to report her driveway visitor. “They were like, ‘Why are you telling us this?’” she said.

She just wanted the police to be aware in case it started happening all over town. “I am a single woman. I live alone. Clearly, this is some kind of scam, but what kind? Is he scoping my house so he can rob me? It was very disconcerting.”

Long said Bernstein — and any consumer who feels someone is trying to scam them — is welcome to call him. (He has not fielded a lot of paving scam complaints this season.) He’s also happy to help advise consumers on hiring legitimate businesses. “You can call us and say I am thinking about hiring ABC Paving. We will let you know about their complaint history.”

Bernstein never saw her driveway visitor again, either, but Neely did. A week after the initial visit, the white pick-up truck went creeping slowly past her house. It was memorable because it had Massachusetts plates. “Up in Sullivan or Greene county, you have a lot of crossover. But down here? Not as much. This is strange,” she remembered feeling.

She also felt nervous. This time, she was alone. She thought, “Are these guys casing me to rob me?” She turned on her security cameras.

When one of the guys knocked on her door and started the blacktop spiel again, Neely cut him off, reminding him she had already turned them down. He apologized and quickly took off, but she was left with a lingering sense that something wasn’t right. “I didn’t feel like he was dangerous per se, but it didn’t add up to me.”

When posts about the same guys — white truck, Massachusetts plates — surfaced on a neighborhood message board, she felt edified. They had gone as far as Ellenville. “I knew there was something off about this. No way are they doing ‘a job around the corner’ for everyone from High Falls to Ellenville,” she said.

The thing that sticks with Fryburg is that she still isn’t even certain what was being offered. $5 a square foot, but for what? “None of that was explained. I could see someone unsuspecting getting really hoodwinked,” she said.

The shadiness of the operation haunts Neely. “What was the end game? I have been here for 12 years, and this is one of the only times I have felt unsafe.”

A born-and-bred New Yorker who spent childhood weekends and summers all over the Hudson Valley, Alexandra Zissu transplanted fully to New Paltz in 2013 with her family to be close to the farms that feed them-the best move ever. Waking daily to a view of the Gunks sustains her. She's obsessive about family meal, loves trying to grow vegetables with her two girls, talks to trees as she walks in the woods, fosters kittens, and has written six books, all about the environment and health.