Two of Tampa Bay’s most notorious home improvement scammers and the targets of an ongoing 8 On Your Side investigation are behind bars again, this time in Connecticut.
Our 8 On Your Side investigation has been tracking their misdeeds for the past five years.
On Aug. 22, Carlton DeWayne Dunko and Frank Martin Pureber were sentenced to a year in prison for larceny by a Connecticut court and checked into the Bridgeport Correctional Center that same day.
Both men previously served two years in a Florida prison and are still on probation in Florida for running a roofing insurance scam under their former company, NBRC Construction, that cheated nearly 100 victims in six Tampa Bay counties out of at least $632,000.
Our 8 On Your Side investigation that began in 2013 documented how NBRC collected storm damage insurance money on behalf of Tampa Bay area homeowners and either failed to perform the work or failed to pay subcontractors who did the work.
Some homeowners ended up living under blue tarps while others faced the threat of foreclosure due to liens from unpaid subcontractors.
After 8 On Your Side exposed their practices, Dunko and Pureber fled to Connecticut and started a similar operation under assumed names.
Dunko was leading a sales meeting in Milford, Connecticut when Florida fraud agents flew there to bust him for his NBRC crimes.
8 On Your Side was there for the bust that included six members of Dunko’s organization back in Tampa, including his wife Stacie.
Pinellas homeowner Pamela Beynon is one of the NBRC victims who had to live in misery with a leaky roof after Dunko and Pureber cheated her out of a storm damage insurance claim.
“It was devastating, actually. I couldn’t afford a new roof,” Beynon said.
After learning of Dunko and Pureber’s latest imprisonment Beynon was pleased.
“Karma, fate whatever you want to call it, it just makes me smile,” Beynon said.
Dunko has been paying back his share of the restitution to NBRC victims at the rate of $500 a month while living in luxury in a gated community at Tampa’s Cheval Golf and Country Club with his wife Stacie, who was a convicted co-defendant in the NBRC case.
An 8 On Your Side investigation first alerted Florida’s Statewide Prosecutor and state fraud agents to the NBRC insurance scam five years ago.
They set up a similar business called CTST Construction in Connecticut. It was that business that landed them in a Connecticut prison last week after their sentencing for larceny.
Lately, 8 On Your Side has been investigating Dunko and Pureber’s “consulting” roles with another Tampa roofing company that’s been under investigation for deceptive business practices that is operated by Neal Scoppettuolo.
Pasco County banned Scoppettuolo from involvement in the government sanctioned PACE financing program and Hillsborough sanctioned Scoppettuolo for misleading advertising that made his company appear as a government agency. Dunko told his probation officer Scoppettuolo was paying him as much as $12,000 a month for his consulting services.
A PACE financing company, Ygrene Energy Fund, dropped Scoppettuolo from its vendor list because of his association with Dunko and Pureber. Scoppettuolo also shares a home at Cheval with Carlton Dunko and Dunko’s wife, who is also on probation.
Even after Dunko and Pureber finish their prison sentence in Connecticut, they still face trial in Missouri for alleged fraud they committed there around eight years ago when they ran another roofing company based in Georgia called American Shingle and Siding.
Back then, the Better Business Bureau issued a nationwide alert about American Shingle and estimated that it scammed homeowners in 11 states out of as much as $65 million in a storm-chasing insurance fraud scheme.
