Man arrested for swindling resident in home repair scam
A Dalton man was arrested in Catoosa County after he allegedly swindled a resident out of hundreds of dollars as part of his ongoing home repair scam.
According to the Catoosa County Sheriff’s Department:
Jacob Moore Lowe, 38, of 101 Forrest Park Road in Dalton was arrested on Oct. 28 on charges of theft by deception and failure to appear.
Lowe has been released from jail on bond.
Lowe’s charges stem from a July 8 incident in which he approached a Ringgold resident, agreed to so some heating and air work, received money up front for expenses, and then never returned to do the work.
The victim told detectives he gave Lowe $937.50 in cash for a new compressor for his air conditioning unit, and that Lowe then began ignoring phone calls, or would answer and say he’d be there the next day only to still not show up.
Detectives took out a warrant for Lowe’s arrest after the victim reported him on Sept. 14.
Lowe has a history of these crimes.
On June 25, 2015, he was arrested on the same charge of theft by deception after he scammed a woman out of $2,400 using the same tactics.
The woman in that case claimed she gave Lowe the funds up front to buy new heating and air conditioning units for her home, only to have him skip out on the work and never return.
According to a Tunnel Hill family, Lowe was also busy between arrests, as they’ve gone round and round with him for months over work he agreed to do for them.
“We needed some work done on our house, and he came out here, we gave him some money, and then he started putting us off and giving us excuses,” Brian McRobie said. “First it was one excuse, and then another.”
McRobie says he threatened to call the police not long after the work agreement was in place, but that Lowe began showing up and doing a little bit of work on occasion, so he kept trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“We hired him to do the work before I saw that first story about him taking people’s money,” McRobie said.
McRobie says he finally did file a report with the Sheriff’s Department regarding Lowe attempting to give them the shaft.
“He never did do the work right,” McRobie said. “He came out probably a dozen times over four and a half months, and we went all summer without getting our air fixed right. We finally told him to go away and not come back.”
McRobie says he and his wife wound up paying Lowe nearly $4,000 for the shoddy work.
“I hope people see that he’s getting arrested for this stuff,” McRobie said. “They need to quit letting him out of jail so he’ll quit doing this to people.”
In addition to Lowe’s two arrests on the theft by deception charges, he was also arrested on Feb. 16 on a failure to appear bench warrant after he didn’t show up to court to face the charge from the first theft case.