Fraudulent ‘repair man’ a danger to clients, court hears

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This article was published 27/02/2025 (568 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A furnace repair man, who was jailed over a decade ago for swindling customers and who has been repeatedly stripped of his licence, was back in a Winnipeg courtroom Wednesday accused of defrauding more people.

Fifty-year-old Scott Robert Anderson, who operates under the business name Winnipeg Gas-Pro Ltd., pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud and two counts of working without a gasfitter’s licence.

An agreed statement of facts provided to court says Anderson’s licence has been suspended twice since 2012 due to “concerns about the quality of (his) work and his ability to perform as a gasfitter.”

Anderson has not held a valid gasfitter’s licence — a prerequisite for certain jobs requiring a work permit — since April 2018.

In 2022, the province’s inspection and technical services branch began receiving complaints about work Anderson did without a permit. According to the agreed statement of facts, Anderson paid another man who did hold a gasfitter’s licence to apply for permits for work Anderson had done.

One 78-year-old victim contacted Anderson in June 2022 to fix her air conditioner. After the woman told Anderson she would rather he replace the air conditioner than pay $800 to fix it, he convinced her to replace her furnace and hot water tank as well.

Anderson had been working on the woman’s air conditioning unit and left the house when all her carbon monoxide detectors started beeping.

When Anderson returned and the woman alerted him to the beeping, Anderson “did not appear to be concerned… and continued to work without making any attempts to determine what may have caused the detectors to be activated,” says the agreed statement of facts.

The woman called the fire department and her gas was turned off. A Manitoba Hydro employee inspected the home and found an acetylene tank Anderson had left behind the furnace was leaking.

A Manitoba Hydro inspector went to the house a month later, learned no permits had been obtained for the work and found “deficiencies” that required the gas be turned off until fixed. When Anderson didn’t respond to her repeated demands to fix the problem, the woman called Manitoba Hydro and the Office of the Fire Commissioner for help.

“This resulted in Anderson calling (the woman) and demanding that she stop making his life so difficult” and said “if she didn’t stop making phone calls complaining about him he wouldn’t return at all.”

Anderson returned twice to fix the work, which still didn’t pass inspection. The woman hired another company to finish the work in January 2023.

In another incident, Anderson was hired to fix the boiler at the clubhouse of the Nomads Football Club, on McPhillips Street.

When club vice-president Rodney Sankar returned to the clubhouse two weeks later, he immediately smelled gas and turned off the boiler. Anderson never responded to calls to return and fix the problem.

A Manitoba Hydro inspector discovered Anderson, in repairing the boiler, had used a “severely damaged” gasket, which caused gas and carbon monoxide to leak from the heat exchanger.

Anderson admitted he had lied to customers that he was a licenced gasfitter, but contested allegations by prosecutors his work was shoddy and exposed his customers to great risk and constituted aggravating factors at sentencing.

At a hearing earlier this week, prosecutors called several witnesses, including victims and the trades people who repaired Anderson’s work, to testify about the incidents.

“Mr. Anderson has consistently demonstrated an inability to do the gas-fitting work in a reasonable manner with reasonable skills,” Crown attorney Jocelyne Ritchot told provincial court Judge David Ireland on Wednesday.

“All of these situations are indicative of a pattern of behaviour where Scott Anderson creates dangerous circumstances that could lead to harm or potentially death for his customers,” Ritchot said. “There is evidence that again and again he is doing work that is not up to code,” she said, citing the testimony of trades people and inspectors who saw Anderson’s work and found it “sloppy” and “unsafe.”

Anderson asked two of his customers for more money after providing services “not up to appropriate standards,” and continued to advertise his services after he was charged with the offences, Ritchot said.

Defence lawyer Greg Sacks argued gas leaks and other malfunctions could be blamed on “intervening event(s)” that occurred when Anderson was away and before he had finished his work. Sacks also argued there was an inconsistency in the evidence “what specifically (Anderson) was hired to do.”

Anderson will return to court for sentencing in late spring.

In 2012, Anderson — who already had 20 fraud convictions on his criminal record — was sentenced to 15 months in jail after admitting to cheating six customers, taking money for services he didn’t deliver, or botching the services he did.

Court heard the furnace of one elderly customer was leaking gas and “had flames shooting out of it” after Anderson worked on it.

“I can tell you, Mr. Anderson, that I am satisfied you exhibited a pattern of incorrigible and at times predatory behaviour,” provincial court Judge Carena Roller said at the time.

Two years later, Anderson was convicted of defrauding another customer and sentenced to five months in jail.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca