In hindsight, Sean Cochran said he realizes where he went wrong. If the customer refused to pay the inflated prices, the defendants would in some cases steal their possessions, never delivering them, the release said.Īs complaints mounted against them, those companies would be shut down, and a new one would be created in its place. Arriving at customers’ homes, they would load goods onto their trucks and then increase the price of the move. Prosecutors described elements of a classic scam: The fake companies created fake online reviews to trick customers into thinking they were legitimate, then provided low estimates to win the customers’ business. Using a warehouse in West Chester, Ohio, the 12 suspects operated at least 14 moving companies with names such as Flagship Van Lines, Public Moving Services and Unified Van Lines, a department news release said. Department of Justice announced federal racketeering charges against 12 individuals who it said used a Hollywood office to run a national moving scheme that defrauded more than 900 customers. Questionable companies probably see the state “as a target market - a nice area to operate,” he said. So it makes sense that Florida is home to a disproportionate share of moving companies that generate large numbers of complaints, said Scott Michael, president and CEO of the American Moving and Storage Association. In this world, companies licensed as brokers that own no actual trucks and employ no laborers call themselves moving companies and don’t necessarily disclose to customers that they subcontract jobs out to low-bid independent movers across the country - leaving customers vulnerable to a wide range of abuses, experts say. Welcome to the complicated, sophisticated and risk-laden marketplace of phony and legitimate interstate moving companies - a scary world with little regulation and enforcement, and slick, convincing websites. “They said delivery would take no more than 15 business days.” “I paid the deposit on June 7, and they picked the stuff up on June 27,” Sean Cochran said in early August. More than two months after they were loaded into a truck dispatched by a South Florida-based moving company, Rochelle Cochran’s belongings still haven’t shown up at her new home, said the 73-year-old’s son, Sean.Įverything Rochelle Cochran cared about was put on that truck, including furniture, heirlooms, jewelry, family photographs and keepsakes from her career with Motown Records.
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