by WorldTribune Staff, November 24, 2023
The Biden Department of Energy (DOE) awarded a $3 billion loan to Houston-based solar company Sunnova, which has been accused of a horrific scam involving dementia patients on their deathbeds, a report said.
Sunnova pressured the dementia patients into signing five-figure, multi-decade solar panel leases, according to interviews and state consumer complaint records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
More than 50 consumer complaints have been filed against Sunnova with the Texas attorney general’s office since last year, for issues ranging from maintenance delays to allegedly predatory sales tactics, the report said.
The Free Beacon interviewed Terry Blythe, a Texas resident who said that her 86-year-old father who had been diagnosed with dementia was persuaded by a door-to-door Sunnova salesman to sign a 25-year solar panel lease in 2020. When her father passed away earlier this year, Blythe said she was left with the $34,000 contract.
“It was truly ripping off old people,” she said. “It was the biggest ripoff I’ve ever seen.”
Blythe said she sold her parents’ home, which was in disrepair and in a low-income neighborhood, to pay for her mother’s assisted living care. But she said she was forced to take a significant price cut because buyers weren’t willing to pay for the entire solar panel contract.
“If I can’t recoup the money my mom needs, at least maybe I can help others that they might scam,” she said. “The fact that they were just awarded that much money from the government is sickening.”
Mary Loller told the Free Beacon that her elderly father was senile and had been given months to live when a door-to-door Sunnova salesman sold him a $60,000 solar system for his mobile home last year.
“My dad told [the salesman] at that time he was on hospice and dying. And basically, he wasn’t in his right mind,” said Loller. After her father passed away, Loller said Sunnova placed a lien on the mobile home, which prevented the family from selling the property.
A Harris County woman said her 80-year-old mother was “blind, bed bound, partially deaf, on dialysis, with congestive heart failure” when Sunnova sold her a 25-year, $86,000 contract. The woman died three months later.
“Sunnova used predatory lending tactics and fraud to execute a 25 year contract on an elderly woman that was dying, and would never live 25 years to pay off a contract of this magnitude,” the complaint read.
Another woman said she was trying to sell the home of a deceased man when she discovered that he had been sold a 25-year solar contract by Sunnova at age 78. She said prospective home buyers didn’t want the solar panels, and she was stuck paying off the $40,000 lease.
“I believe that should be a criminal offense right there,” she wrote in the complaint.
Sunnova signed the $3 billion loan guarantee with the DOE in September of this year, well after news of complaints against the company had gone public.
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