WOODBURY, MN (WNN) – Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced his office has reached a settlement with a business owned by Woodbury residents. They admit to multiple fraudulent activities and will shut down.
The agreement will require Community Blacktop, LLC (which also went by the names of C. Blacktop LLC, Community Construction, LLC, Frontier Construction, and MVP Valued Paving & Engineering) to shutter operations.
They will also have to pay the $100,000 to the State of Minnesota that the Attorney General’s Office will use for restitution to victims.
A news release from the Attorney General’s Office says the company “victimized consumers in Minnesota and across the country, targeting the elderly in particular, by promising quality asphalt work at a discount, but delivering subpar results and subsequently demanding outrageously inflated prices multiple times in excess of what was initially quoted.”
The Attorney General’s Office’s settlement states that Brandon Michael Ferguson of Woodbury and his business told consumers that he could give them a deal on asphalt work if they accepted that day because he had leftover asphalt from nearby projects. Sometimes, Ferguson would tell consumers that he had been working on a state highway nearby, even though the Minnesota Department of Transportation has no record of Ferguson or his companies engaging in such work.
In a consent judgment, Ferguson admits that he procured consent to perform work by fraud and violated a number of Minnesota’s consumer protection statutes.
Attorney General Ellison encourages Minnesotans to submit complaints about Mr. Ferguson and Community Blacktop, or any other scam, by filing a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office via its online complaint form. The AG’s Office states that the company’s poor record-keeping makes it difficult to identify victims of the fraud so they are encouraged to come forward.
The Attorney General’s Office can also be reached by calling (651) 296-3353 from within the Twin Cities or (800) 657-3787 from Greater Minnesota.
Ferguson lives in Woodbury off Cherry Lane.
His business location according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office is on 27th Street East in Hastings.
The Attorney General’s Office worked with sheriff’s offices in Beltrami, Kanabec, Morrison, Stearns, and Todd Counties, local police departments in Hastings and Woodbury, and law enforcement in Wisconsin and Michigan.
