Prosecutor: Contractors accused of stealing $2M from Sandy victims

The Ocean County prosecutor has filed theft charges against the owners of a homebuilding company that’s accused of stealing more than $2 million from victims of Superstorm Sandy.

News 12 Staff

May 30, 2019, 11:45 PM

Updated 2,023 days ago

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The Ocean County prosecutor has filed theft charges against the owners of a homebuilding company that’s accused of stealing more than $2 million from victims of Superstorm Sandy. The company, Price Home Group, was named in a 2016 Kane In Your Corner investigation.
Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Brian Huntenburg says the owners of the company, Jonathan Price of Manahawkin and Scott Cowan of Demarest, signed contracts with 31 homeowners but “performed little to no work”.
Jill Belloff of Waretown is one of those homeowners. She hired Price Home Group to construct a modular home to replace her house, which was destroyed by Sandy. The project was supposed to be paid for in part by a FEMA grant. She says the company took full payment but never delivered a house.
Belloff eventually rebuilt her house using her own money, and was not able to complete the project until the state approved supplemental grant money to replace the funds that were stolen. In all, she was out of her home for five years.
“Every day we walk into the house, it’s a reminder of many bad things,” she says, adding “I will have my closure the day that they close the cell door.”
Belloff tells Kane In Your Corner that she welcomes the criminal charges but they’re not enough to compensate for everything she and her family endured.