NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & SportsSuspected Traveling Con Artists Hit Midstate

Suspected Traveling Con Artists Hit Midstate

SILVER POINT, Tenn. - Senior citizens are being targeting with a driveway paving scam by a family traveling through Middle Tennessee.

Police said members of the Culp family are peddling pavement repairs and jacking up the prices. The group is suspected of victimizing people two other states.

"My goal is no other old person on a fixed income ever has to go through this anymore," said a woman, who lives outside of Cookeville.

She said she hopes police catch them to prevent additional crimes.

On Monday, she said promised a brand-new asphalt driveway for $400. But she was billed for more than $4,500.

She said she was pressured into signing a check and contract with James L. Culp. He is possibly the same man arrested in South Carolina for soliciting business without a license.

"I feel like I've been entrapped. I really, I mean, it's about made me have a nervous breakdown because I didn't have the money to do that," she said. "And I told him when he came here I didn't."

Three of Culp's blood relatives also have similar arrests and are suspected of identical scams in Missouri.

The woman who said she was conned stopped payment on her check.

Detectives in Putnam County are trying to figure out if the suspects are members of the Culp family out of Hannibal, Mo., who have been linked to paving scams in Missouri and South Carolina