Tony Glidden acknowledges Tuesday his sentence of three years in prison during a virtual sentencing at the Capitol Judicial Center in Augusta. The contractor, held at the Kennebec County Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty to defrauding several people for work not performed on residences and camps across Maine. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal
AUGUSTA — A contractor who stole more than $130,000 from two dozen mostly-elderly clients by taking their deposits for work he never did was sentenced Tuesday to serve three years in prison.
The sentence came after victims testified at the Capital Judicial Center how Tony J. Glidden’s actions devastated them financially and emotionally.
Glidden took more than $130,000 in deposits from about 24 customers to do siding, window and roof projects, authorities said. His business, Mainely Roofing and Siding, targeted elderly customers, offering them “senior discounts” on work that prosecutors said Glidden had no intentions of doing.
Instead of the work they paid for, Glidden provided only excuses. Judge Sarah Gilbert said he sought out some of the most vulnerable members of society — elderly homeowners — and would threaten and coerce them if they pushed him to do the work he said he’d do on their homes.
“Mr. Glidden felt he could manipulate the elderly of our community,” Gilbert said. “He demonstrated a willingness to threaten and coerce them when they pushed back. He’d belittle them when they used their voices to speak out.”
And his fraudulent contracting efforts continued even after his March 2021 arrest on home repair fraud and theft charges for taking a $25,000 deposit from a Belgrade widow. The project was to replace the windows and siding of her home, with money she and her late husband had been saving up for years to have that work done.
Glidden, 34, never did the work and when she questioned him about it he gave her a litany of excuses, claiming he was slammed with work, that guys working for him had stolen money from him, and that he had been screwed over by a lender. When she threatened to go to the police, he told her she’d be leaving his child without a father.
“This is probably in vain, but I’d like Tony Glidden to know his action against me, spending the $25,000 deposit I gave him, has been devastating, financially and emotionally,” the woman testified in court Tuesday. “I don’t know why he felt he could spend mine and my husband’s hard-earned money on his vices — drug use, gambling and probably more. Obviously his morals are not the same as mine.”
Glidden, who appeared in court via Zoom from the Kennebec County jail in Augusta, did not testify or offer any apologies to his victims.
Glidden pleaded guilty to a felony theft charge in July, and was sentenced to seven years in prison, with all but three of those years suspended.
VICTIMS SPEAK OUT
Initially authorities said Glidden defrauded more than 20 customers, 16 of them over the age of 60, in 2020 and 2021, by taking deposits for home improvements and then never doing the work promised, according to prosecutor Suzanne Russell, an assistant attorney general for the state.
Several additional victims came forward with similar allegations, adding a second charge of theft, to which Glidden pleaded guilty Tuesday.
A Lamoine woman gave Glidden $5,000 as a deposit to put a roof on her home in March 2021 but he never did the work. She told authorities after they hired him they saw a newspaper article about his arrest for stealing the Belgrade widow’s money. He told her it was a misunderstanding. She said she decided to give him a chance to do the work despite what she’d read but Glidden didn’t do the work and, she said, gave her several excuses.
One victim asked the judge to extend Glidden’s time in prison, calling him a professional criminal. She said their home sits still unfinished, and her husband is ill and won’t live long enough to see the home completed.
“I will never, ever, forgive Tony for this crime,” she said via Zoom. “My wish for him is he always sees the faces of the people he harmed.”
The Kennebec Journal is not naming the victims in the case out of concern they could be targeted for future fraud. Victims were located in Kennebec, Somerset, Lincoln, Penobscot and Hancock counties, plus other areas across the state.
Other theft charges filed against Glidden by authorities were dropped as part of a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to a single count of Class B theft, a felony charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The second theft charge was added after his initial guilty plea to the single charge in July.
He was sentenced to seven years with all but three years suspended, meaning he’ll serve only three years in prison if he complies with the terms of his probation, but could serve the full seven years if he does not.
The victims that came forward later on increased the total of his thefts to $130,204, up from an original estimate of $115,000.
His probation conditions require him to pay that back in restitution to his victims. Upon his release he’s required to pay $1,000 a month in restitution, which Russell explained to some of the victims would be paid back to them, with amounts for each victim varying based on how much he took from them.
MONEY FOR NOTHING
Russell said Glidden gave the same excuses he gave to the Belgrade woman, and many more, to other customers who said he refused to refund their money. Court testimony indicated Glidden cashed deposit checks nearly as soon as he got them, and apparently spent at least some of the money on drugs and online gambling.
Conditions of his probation include he take part in substance use disorder treatment and gambling addiction treatment, submit to random searches and be tested for drugs and alcohol, have no contact with any of his victims, and to not solicit, manage or possess customer funds.
Mainely Roofing and Siding’s Facebook page advertised senior citizen discounts and boasted having 500 customers and no complaints. Glidden employed two business managers, who Russell said quit after they realized Glidden wasn’t doing the work he was taking deposits for. One former manager said he quit after realizing jobs weren’t being done and when work was done for other customers, workers appeared to be on drugs. The manager said Glidden told him he was using drugs and gambling online, and borrowed money from him on a regular basis, to make payroll.
He required customers to make down payments well above the one-third of the project’s total cost allowed by Maine law, Russell said previously. He’d request customers make deposits either through an online app he used, or by check and, if payment was by check, to make the check out to his name.
He would tell most customers, on estimates, that the work would start in four to six weeks. He would start a pattern of delay and avoidance, the prosecutor said, but no actual work. When refunds were requested he’d tell customers their contract stated that deposits were not refundable.
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