Curbside Paint 'Scammers' Now Actually Painting the Curbs

The plot thickens in the Manalapan feint paint job scam.

The alleged scammers who police say stole money from dozens of Manalapan residents, promising to paint their house numbers on the curb and then disappeared, are now back, actually painting the curbs.

“They came out and did mine today. They must’ve seen online what was going on,” a Manalapan woman, who lives in the Yorktown section of the township, said Monday.

The 36-year-old woman, who prefers to stay anonymous, said she’s seen street numbers painted on many a curb Monday evening, just one day after police warned residents about the con job on Facebook. Letters started showing up taped to residents’ mailboxes on Nov. 18, requesting they pay $15 for their house number to be painted on the curb. After leaving a check made out to ’Olivia Fitzpatrick’ taped to the front door, someone collected the checks and then disappeared, said police. Dozens of Manalapan residents reported being taken in by the con.

The woman said she fell for it: She paid $20 to have both sides of her driveway painted. A man, pictured in this video and shown above on her neighbor’s security camera, came and collected the cash on Nov. 21 and then disappeared. Instead of doing the job, the man left a note, pictured second, blaming ”inclement weather/time constraints.” The original Nov. 18 letter about the paint job taped to her mailbox is pictured third.

The woman reported the incident to police, who at the time told her nobody else was reporting this.

“So I gave up. I figured it was 20 dollars and I learned my lesson,” she told Patch. “I was going to find someone else to do it, or just (paint) it myself.”

So you can imagine her shock when she drove back to her house Monday evening to see her house number painted on the curb. But she’s still annoyed, and wants the ”painters” caught.

“It was a scam and they got caught,” she said. “They collected money almost three weeks ago and disappeared, and now finally decided to do the work.”