Moving’s always rough, but these clients feel victimized
by changed deals, broken possessions
In May 2021, Ahmed Khan decided to move his family from New Jersey to Texas using broker Vintage Van Lines Inc., which operates out of Miami Lakes. He said the broker quoted him $3,939, which he agreed to. To reserve his pickup date of July 16, Khan paid the company a deposit of $1,473.20 on June 22, to be deducted from the total amount.
But the day before the move, Vintage Van Lines raised Khan’s quote to $6,000, demanding that he pay another $1,500 that same day if he still wanted the movers to come the following day, Khan told the Herald. Khan, who couldn’t schedule another moving company on such short notice, felt he had no other option but to pay.
The next day, movers from Pro Tri State Movers LLC, which Vintage Van Lines had contracted for Khan’s move, came to pick up his possessions. But after loading the truck, Khan told the Herald, the drivers demanded more money, raising the total cost again to $9,654. He had more items than they had expected, Khan said the driver told him, even though Kahn insisted this was not the case.
“It was hopeless because we had to fly the next day, so there was no other option. I paid them everything they asked for,” Khan told the Herald.
Vintage Van Lines promised Khan that his things would arrive within five to 10 days, he said. Pro Tri State Movers, meanwhile, gave Khan an estimate of 10 to 21 days. But weeks went by with no news from the company. At first, company representatives from Pro Tri State Movers told Khan to be patient. Vintage Van Lines, meanwhile, told Khan that they were only brokers and had no obligation to deal with the situation, he said. Then, both companies seemed to vanish.
“They didn’t answer my calls. Then they blocked me. And if they did answer when I called from a different phone, they would threaten and yell at me,” Khan told the Herald. “I have a family of seven and everything we owned was on that truck.”
Khan’s story is far from an isolated incident. Rather, in recent months since a previous article on moving nightmares and an invitation to readers to tell us their experiences, the Herald has received more than 80 tips about alleged moving scams in the state, detailing stories of damaged and stolen furniture, lost adoption papers, missing family heirlooms auctioned off or sold on eBay, demands for bribes and threatening phone calls.
Florida is home to the largest number of moving scammers in the country, according to an investigation by the Better Business Bureau.
Attorney General Ashley Moody has filed six lawsuits targeting 14 moving companies, four of which have been successfully litigated. But it is a problem that Moody has had difficulty bringing under control. This past March, she issued a consumer alert warning Floridians about the pervasiveness of the problem.
“My 3-year-old is turning 4,” Khan told the Herald. “When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he told me he wanted his toys back. We only had one backpack between us on the flight. After everything, hearing him say that was heartbreaking.”
Khan, his wife, his parents, and his kids were all forced to sleep on the floor of their new house for weeks until Khan dipped into the family’s already depleted savings to buy new mattresses and bed frames. He said he also had to buy new clothes for the family, as well as other necessities. But while replacing most of their things was expensive, Khan said, and while it will take time to recover financially, it was his family’s most treasured possessions that he feared losing the most.
“My spouse’s degrees, my kids’ birth certificates, our marriage license and
‘‘ IT WAS HOPELESS BECAUSE WE HAD TO FLY THE NEXT DAY, SO THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION. I PAID THEM EVERYTHING THEY ASKED FOR. Ahmed Khan
marriage certificate and my parents’ memories that they’ve been saving for all their lives,” Khan said, “all just gone.”
It was these sentimental possessions that Khan had in mind when Pro Tri State Movers finally showed up in late September to drop off his possessions. But before the crew would begin unloading the truck or even open the doors, Khan told the Herald, the movers demanded that Khan pay the balance up front and sign a paper confirming his items were delivered in good condition. If he didn’t sign the paper, Khan said the movers told him, then they would turn around and leave with his things.
“At that point I was so desperate to get our sentimental items and documents that I would have signed anything,” Khan told the Herald.
Khan capitulated and the movers unloaded the truck. To Khan’s dismay, some of his furniture was irreparably damaged, including glass items that were shattered. Worse? There was really nothing he could do about it.
Current moving company licensing requirements in Florida have done little to stop unscrupulous companies. Applications for the appropriate licensing are not stringent, nor is there much oversight once licenses are granted.
A majority of those who submitted tips to the Herald told a journalist that they contracted companies with all the appropriate licensing. Companies can circumvent oversight from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — the agency within the Department of Transportation that is in charge of licensing moving companies and investigating complaints — by changing their name.
Multiple sources said they complained to the FMCSA, but they never heard back — or received a form letter in return. According to a database on the Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s website, out of the 28,055 enforcement cases opened and closed against companies since 2015, only one has been against moving brokers like Vintage Van Lines, companies that contract for a mover, as opposed to the movers themselves.
Khan said he filed a complaint about both companies to the FMCSA but two months later had not received a response, he told the Herald. When he tried calling, he would be put on hold for hours.
On occasions when he made it through the wait, the line would ring twice and then an automated message would tell him
that the FMCSA was experiencing system problems and was unable to process his call. Then, the line would disconnect, and Khan would have to start over.
The Herald called both phone numbers provided by the FMCSA for its complaint hotline, and both had more than an hour of waiting time, followed by the automated message and the call disconnecting.
Records show that Vintage Van Lines was opened in August 2020 by Jeremiah Medders, 30. The company’s Better Business Bureau profile shows at least 73 complaints and a 1.5-star rating out of a possible five. Pro Tri State Movers LLC, meanwhile, was opened by Juan Carlos Tapia, 38, in mid-2018. The company, which does not have a website, has a listed address of 6610 Marsden St., a multi-family home in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Vintage Van Lines did not respond to multiple requests for comment. An email to Pro Tri Movers bounced.
Every year, Florida attracts a growing number of retirees looking to spend their golden years somewhere sunny and affordable. They and their savings are prime targets for moving scammers.
This is what Ilene and
Amy Rosenfield — a recently retired couple in their 60s who decided to move from Georgia to Yulee, near Jacksonville, in March — told the Herald happened to them. They looked for movers online, they said, and found New Leaf Moving Group operating out of Boynton Beach. The company had all the appropriate licensing and seemingly had good reviews.
New Leaf gave them an estimate of $6,600 for the move, the Rosenfields told the Herald, which they said they found reasonable. At the time, they added, they didn’t realize that New Leaf was a broker and would hand off the job to a different company — D&H Express Moving LLC in St. Louis — which the Rosenfields had never heard of and which they said had horrible Yelp and Better Business Bureau reviews when they looked it up much later.
New Leaf was first registered as a for-profit Florida corporation by Rebecca Lynne Reid, 29, in April 2020, under the name “Relocation Management Group Inc.” Still, the company conducts all its business dealings under New Leaf, which left the Rosenfields feeling duped. When they looked up New Leaf, they told the Herald, they found only relatively positive reviews. But when they looked up Relocation Management Group, they said, the Better Business Bureau was riddled with complaints.
In addition to running New Leaf/Relocation Management Group, Reid is also listed as the manager of at least four other companies: Long Distance Relocation Group Inc., Long Distance Relocation Corp., Lynch Online
Stores Inc. and RL Reid Incorporated. The first is inactive; the rest are not.
Two D&H movers arrived at the Rosenfields’ home on April 28 in an unmarked rental truck, the couple told the Herald. Records show that the company, which opened in 2017 and has four employees, is run out of a multifamily home in the suburbs of St. Louis by David (Dejvid) Golubovic. But as soon as the movers showed up, they told the couple the initial estimate was way off and it would be nearly doubled, the Rosenfields told the Herald.
“They told us if we didn’t pay up, then no problem, they would just turn around and leave,” Ilene Rosenfield told the Herald. “Obviously, that wasn’t an option for us, since we were moving in a couple days.”
The Rosenfields agreed to pay the higher price, but by the end of the day, it was clear that all their furniture would not fit inside the single truck that D&H had brought, they said, despite the company’s assurances that morning that it would. So the couple paid more than $2,000 for an additional truck, they added, which came the following day to pick up the rest of their belongings. Then, they moved into their Airbnb in Jacksonville, where they planned to stay for two months until their new home was ready.
The contract that the Rosenfields signed with New Leaf specified that their items would be delivered within two to five days of being requested. But when they moved into their new home in Yulee, north of Jacksonville, and requested their furniture, the owner of the moving company kept pushing back the drop-off date, they said. The Rosenfields said Golubovic, 27, either wouldn’t answer their calls, or would give them excuses. But the more the Rosenfields called, the more belligerent he became, the couple said, at one point screaming at them over the phone to stop calling him. Eventually, he blocked both their numbers.
Then, they looked him up and found out that he had been arrested at least once on assault charges. Records from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police confirm that Golubovic was arrested and charged with first-degree aggravated assault in early 2015, for which he was given five years probation. He was charged and booked for third-degree assault again in December 2020, although the resolution of that case was not available.
“We were honestly afraid of the guy after that and stopped trying to contact him,” Amy Rosenfield told the Herald.
The Rosenfields reached out to their family attorney, who suggested they call the police. But they didn’t know where their possessions were, nor which police department to contact, one in Georgia or Florida. “We’re two 60-year-old women, and we spent over a month in our completely empty new home sleeping on a blow-up mattress,” Ilene Rosenfield told the Herald. “We had to go to Goodwill just so we could stop eating off paper plates.”
Finally, on Aug. 6, the movers arrived with the Rosenfields’ possessions. But before opening the doors to the trucks, the couple said, the movers demanded they pay the remaining $7,051.87 balance in cash and sign a paper confirming that they had received their possessions in good condition. With the doors closed, the couple couldn’t verify that this was true.
“They told us that if we didn’t sign, then they would turn around and leave with all our things, and this whole nightmare would begin all over again,” Ilene told the Herald. They signed the paper.
Various pieces of furniture arrived damaged, the couple told the Herald. Plates that belonged to Ilene’s late mother were shattered. Amy’s grandmother’s dresser, her parents’ table and a chair that her father wrote all his music in — he was a well-known jazz musician — were damaged. The Rosenfields said they watched horrified as the movers dumped the shattered remnants of their lives onto the front lawn of their new home.
They told the Herald they felt there was nowhere they could turn to for help. “Sure, you can complain to the Better Business Bureau or to the government afterwards, but by then it’s too late,” Ilene Rosenfield said.
“The damage is already done.”
A representative from New Leaf denied any allegations of wrongdoing via email and said any price changes prior to pickup occurred because inventory and packing specifications changed from what the company was originally provided. “As for allegations regarding D&H Express,” the company representative wrote, “we only use moving companies that are fully licensed through the DOT and the FMCSA.”
D&H did not reply to multiple emailed requests for comment.
In the end, the Rosenfields paid $15,900 — nearly 2 1/2 times their original estimate — for a move that destroyed some of their family heirlooms. It was the sentimental items, some of their last remaining ties to their parents and other relatives, that hurt the most to lose, the couple told the Herald. They said the company offered 60 cents per pound reimbursement for damaged items but never forwarded them the claim form, which they asked for three times. At that point, the Rosenfields decided they’d had enough.
“We both got PTSD from the entire experience. I lost 15 pounds from stress and Amy nearly had to be hospitalized,” Ilene told the Herald. On top of that, she said, the movers didn’t wear masks, which made the women uncomfortable. Although they can’t be sure it is traceable to that, both women soon contracted COVID-19. They had both been vaccinated and neither had to be hospitalized, although Amy Rosenfield experienced a nasty sinus infection.
“After everything that went down, and then getting sick on top of that, we just didn’t have the energy to deal with them anymore. We just wanted them out of our lives,” Ilene told the Herald. “So, for our own well-being, we decided to write it off and call it a lesson learned. And that’s probably what they were counting on all along.”
“Laws need to be changed,” Amy Rosenfield told the Herald. “Because as it stands, these scammers have got you over a barrel as soon as you put in your first deposit. And they know it the entire time. But by the time you know it too, it’s already too late.”
‘‘ WE BOTH GOT PTSD FROM THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE. I LOST 15 POUNDS FROM STRESS AND AMY NEARLY HAD TO BE HOSPITALIZED.
Ilene Rosenfield