An employee of a Little Rock roofing company was arrested on felony and misdemeanor warrants Thursday after allegedly forging roofing contracts with customers and obtaining commission payments illegally.
Hunter Lem Ramsey, 22, whose last known address was El Dorado, was taken into custody around 1:15 p.m. and charged with two felony counts of second-degree forgery, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and a misdemeanor count of theft of property less than $1,000, punishable by up to one year in jail.
Ramsey, who lists no prior criminal history locally, was later released on a $8,000 bond and is set to appear June 7 in Garland County District Court.
According to the probable cause affidavit, on March 8, the manager of NELA Roofing in Little Rock told Hot Springs police an employee, identified as Ramsey, had been falsely forging contract forms with the company.
The affidavit notes Ramsey is paid commission per signed contract for roof repair that he obtains and for the past two to three weeks Ramsey’s contracts were reportedly proven false with forged signatures. The manager provided three contracts for Hot Springs that he alleged were fraudulent with the commission paid for the contracts totaling $250.
HSPD Detective Matthew Cheatham reviewed the contracts and then made contact with the individual homeowners listed. One contract was purportedly signed on Feb. 16 by a local man who told Cheatham that Ramsey had come to his house and spoke with his wife about a new roof. He said he never spoke to Ramsey and neither he nor his wife signed any contract.
A second contract was purportedly signed on Feb. 20 by a local woman. Cheatham made contact with a male resident of the home in question who told him someone had come by and attempted to get him to sign a contract for a new roof, but he told the man he wasn’t interested in signing anything.
Cheatham asked about the woman’s name on the contract and he noted that was his girlfriend’s last name and she was the owner of the home, but neither one of them had signed any contracts.
Cheatham then checked on the last contract, signed Feb. 22, and made contact with a woman who lived at the home in question with her daughter. She said a man came by asking about them getting a new roof, but their insurance company had already told them they would not be able to get a new one at that time.
She said she told the man that and he left. She noted neither she nor her daughter had signed any contract and that no one with the name listed on the contract lived at their address.
After further investigation, Cheatham obtained warrants for Ramsey’s arrest on March 14.
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