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SMITH COUNTY \u2014 Two individuals from East Texas have been arrested for allegedly scamming an elderly person out of $750 for chimney repairs that were reportedly unnecessary.<\/p>\nSMITH COUNTY \u2014 Two individuals from East Texas have been arrested for allegedly scamming an elderly person out of $750 for chimney repairs that were reportedly unnecessary.<\/p>\n
According to our news partner KETK, law enforcement initiated an investigation in August following a report in March regarding two suspects soliciting chimney sweep services from a victim. Steven Gonzalez, 33, and Erika Salinas, 33, both residents of Tyler, are accused of telling the victim that his chimney required repairs and quoted a price of $750.<\/p>\n
Subsequently, when the victim tried to contact the business they operated under, ETX Chimney Sweep, he received no response despite sending multiple text messages to Salinas requesting a refund.<\/p>\n
Officials stated that neither Gonzalez nor Salinas made any attempts to refund the victim or perform the agreed-upon work. The victim ultimately hired another chimney sweep company, which confirmed that his chimney did not need any repairs.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Gonzalez and Salinas were taken to the Smith County Jail on charges of theft from an elderly person, with their bond set at $100,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SMITH COUNTY \u2014 Two individuals from East Texas have been arrested for allegedly scamming an elderly person out of $750 for chimney repairs that were reportedly unnecessary. According to our news partner KETK, law enforcement initiated an investigation in August following a report in March regarding two suspects soliciting chimney sweep services from a victim. … Continue reading Couple charged with scamming elderly on chimney repairs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3908,"featured_media":1445171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/09\/dbl-scam-225x139.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1445147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 10:18:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/09\/dbl-scam-225x139.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3908"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1445147"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1445622,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445147\/revisions\/1445622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1445171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1445147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1445147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1445147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}