‘Serial Offender’ Arrested Again: Home Contractor Faces New Charges
By Daniel P. Jones, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
May 15–WEST HARTFORD — A Massachusetts man who has spent time in prison on home-improvement fraud convictions faces several new home-improvement contracting charges in West Hartford, according to police and state officials.
Richard A. Koslik, 48, of Springfield, is charged with impersonating a registered home-improvement contractor, making or offering improvements without being registered, and several other related offenses, according to West Hartford police.
Koslik served six months in prison in 2004 after being convicted on similar charges in New Britain, according to the state attorney general’s office.
“He’s a serial offender under the home-improvement contracting laws,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Monday. His office is involved in this case because home-improvement violations are the only criminal cases that the state attorney general’s office prosecutes.
In 2000, Koslik was arrested on charges that he bilked customers across the state. At the time, state officials said they’d received complaints against Koslik from consumers in East Hartford, Avon, Hartford, Waterbury and Wallingford who claimed he took thousands of dollars in deposit money for kitchen remodeling and window work, but never completed the jobs.
According to state records, Koslik has been convicted several times over the past six years for home-improvement contracting violations in several Connecticut towns.
Koslik, who is being investigated for possible home-improvement violations in Bristol and Enfield as well, posted $50,000 bail Monday and is free while facing the new charges involving a homeowner in West Hartford, Blumenthal said.
Today, Blumenthal’s office will ask a Superior Court judge in Hartford to set a date for a hearing to possibly revoke Koslik’s probation stemming from the 2004 conviction, Blumenthal said.
“He can be immediately incarcerated if his probation is revoked and he really should be,” Blumenthal said Monday. “Revoking his probation is particularly appropriate because these latest charges repeat many of the same allegations against him.”
In the latest case against Koslik, the state Department of Consumer Protection issued an arrest warrant May 4.
Blumenthal said Koslik allegedly took money from a West Hartford homeowner under false pretenses. The homeowner terminated the kitchen remodeling contract, valued at nearly $49,000, after learning of Koslik’s previous convictions, Blumenthal said. He said it was unclear how much money the homeowner had paid out on the contract, and that restitution would be sought.
Contact Daniel P. Jones at dpjones@courant.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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