Appliance Store Owner Jailed in Fraud Case
It isn’t easy to win superlatives running a small appliance-repair shop, but the authorities say that after more than 15 years in business, Doug and Lori Cass have earned one: operators of the worst business in Suffolk County.
According to prosecutors and investigators with the Suffolk Department of Consumer Affairs, the Casses, the husband and wife who have owned Active Appliance Corporation, cheated customers out of $500,000 to $1 million doing unnecessary or exorbitantly priced repairs and racked up 800 complaints since getting a business license in 1988. County officials have chased after the couple like a fleet of Ahabs, but each time, the Casses have found a way to keep their business running.
The tangled story of the Casses has become something of a legend among appliance dealers and county officials, and some say it lays bare the county’s inability to shut down a business that, they say, flouts regulations and seems determined to harm consumers.
“In the history of Consumer Affairs, there’s been no one who we’ve ever arrested or prosecuted who has continued to operate in business,” said William J. Baessler, director of the department’s licensing bureau. “They have a lot of money. They have very good attorneys.”
Active Appliance has operated under dozens of different names “” mainly out of a shop in Centereach “” and has changed ownership, operated without a license and fought the county at every step, prosecutors and Consumer Affairs officials said. The Casses have won court battles against disgruntled customers, and when Mr. Cass’s business license was revoked in 1997, he appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court, county officials said. That court refused to hear the appeal.
Even jail time has not halted their business. On Monday, Ms. Cass “” who took control several years ago as the business’s president and owner “” surrendered to county officials and was taken to the Suffolk County Jail. She is to serve a six-month sentence on a felony charge of scheming to defraud. Moments after she was led away, Mr. Cass flipped open his cellphone and vowed to do everything he could to free his wife.
And a phone call on Monday afternoon revealed that the shop was open for business, although possibly not under the old name. “It’s the appliance store,” said a man who answered. “What can I do for you?”
Full details from The New York Times