Man admits scamming seniors
A Berks County businessman has pleaded guilty to scamming dozens of senior citizens through fraudulent hearing aid sales.
Edward D. Grabarek Jr., 52, of the 3500 block of Stoner Avenue, St. Lawrence, pleaded guilty Oct. 10 in Berks County Court to committing unlawful and fraudulent business practices.
Grabarek was the former owner of Hearing Aid Associates in Exeter Township, a business he inherited from his late father. The state has since revoked Grabarek’s license as a hearing aid professional.
The crimes he’s charged with occurred between 2016 and
2018 and all the victims were 60 and older, prosecutors said.
The amount he stole from them ranged from hundreds of dollars to more than $16,000, Assistant District Attorney Justin Bodor said.
Especially troubling about Grabarek’s crimes were that he took advantage of older people who were trying to improve their quality of life with hearing aids, Bodor said.
Grabarek’s sentencing is scheduled for February, and though Judge M. Theresa Johnson will decide his sentence, the plea agreement he reached with prosecutors calls for him to serve two to five years in state prison, followed by five years of probation, Bodor said.
After his hearing he was returned to the county prison, where he has been incarcerated since Feb. 20, 2018. He will receive credit for time already served at sentencing, according to the plea agreement.
In 2016, detectives with the district attorney’s office began receiving calls from customers claiming Grabarek had ripped them off.
Grabarek was charged that year with unlawfully deceiving more than a dozen customers, and after a Reading Eagle story detailed those charges, more victims came forward, prosecutors said. Several more stories followed, and the charges continued to pile up, with a total of 36 victims giving their accounts, prosecutors said.
Grabarek was charged with multiple counts of deceptive or fraudulent business practices and theft by deception, but as part of the agreement pleaded guilty to four counts of the first charge.
In some cases, county detectives said Grabarek was selling used or refurbished hearing aids, which were not properly functioning, and presenting them as new.
In other cases, customers paid for but never received the hearing aids or were provided hearing aids that were meant to be demonstration models only, detectives said.
According to court records:
Some of the victims had been lured to Hearing Aid Associates by signing up to win gift certificates, then were notified that they’d won. Others had been customers of Grabarek’s father before coming to Grabarek for new devices.
Some victims had told Grabarek repeatedly that their devices didn’t fit or work properly, and would return to his office again and again. He would either not be there or would falsely claim to have fixed the devices, and charged the victims for those visits.
Most victims eventually went to other local hearing aid professionals for help, which is where they’d learned their devices were faulty, were used or demo models that Grabarek shouldn’t have sold as new.
Bodor said detectives put in many hours to document the ways in which victims were taken advantage of, and he hopes Grabarek will eventually reimburse all of them, or the families of those who have since passed away.
That is part of the reason prosecutors agreed to a term that potentially could have Grabarek out of prison next year, so he can earn money to repay those he stole from, Bodor said.
Bodor said he also expects Grabarek to make some type of lump sum payment toward restitution prior to his sentencing.
“I want to see those people get paid back as much as possible,” he said.