Late August of I received a response to a craigslist ad I had placed... Seeking stone to use in my back yard. It was from a guy named Mario who told me he had excess granite block that he was selling for a dollar a piece. I googled his name. He was a resident of Holmdel and was a sales person for a company called Rogranite Company. He came to my house in his tinted charcoal Mercedes. He was about 5' 8" He brought with him some sample stone. Had a binder which had rock materials from another company called B & B granite sales, Inc out in Newark. He told me that his family was in the stone business and that he was looking to get into working for the State and needed to get rid of his supplies from a yard in Ocean Township. That location is 1700 Bloomsbury Avenue in Ocean 07712.
He gave me an estimate of how much it would cost and asked me for a deposit of $50 to hold the stone. He came back a day or two later with more samples and asked at that time for a $150 more because he needed to pay the driver. The total cost of the purchase was $400. So $200 up front I didn't really think much of it. Well... Bad mistake... I should have had the red flag waving after he came back for more money. Easy to say now.
To make a long story short, the truck never came. He communicated at first a couple of times via phone, then a large amount of text messages, then email, then his phone broke and he got a new number. He dragged me through months of hope that he would deliver the stone that I had ordered. He used every excuse in the book as to why he had to cancel a scheduled delivery... From broken truck to another job running over to his infant baby son who had hernia and he had to go to the hospital.
So I dug a little deeper into him. Found out that he was in the middle of shortsaling his house in Holmdel and was closing at year's end. So I hope it was the case that he was living on credit... Because that would make him less of a scum bag stealing from me. But a thief is a thief.
So you have to watch out for this guy, especially if you're in the market for granite block or pavers for your next landscape project.
I gave him cash, but I did ask for a receipt and the receipt he used had Rogranite Company with an address of 148 Marsh Street in Port Newark NJ 07114. I tried calling the number on the receipt and I get a person who works for B & B Granite who doesn't know who Mario Rocha is. There is a connection, I'm sure, but I never quite figured it out and I hope you don't have to.
So there's some dirty characters out there doing business and Mario Rocha is one of them. He might be moving to the Old Bridge area so be on the look out for him in his Mercedes with NJ license plate# ending in the letters "BSE".
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