New York City Climate and Environment

Solar Companies Scammed Queens Homeowner Into Predatory Loan, Lawsuit Alleges

The retiree says a local rooftop solar company and its partners forged her signature to sign her up for a loan she could not afford.

Colin Kinniburgh · September 11, 2024

Claver Campbell sits at her dining table in Queens, New York, September 2024. | Colin Kinniburgh

Staying Focused

If you’ve scrolled through social media lately, there’s a good chance you’ve seen an ad for rooftop solar. The latest government incentives are so generous, some ads claim, that you can get a new roof for free with the panels — and eliminate your electric bills in the process.

Claver Campbell, a 76-year-old homeowner in Queens, came across one such ad on Facebook about a year ago, she recalled. It promised a new roof and solar panels to qualifying seniors, an appealing proposition for Campbell, who was having a hard time affording her energy bills. She called the listed number and connected with a solar company she’d never heard of, called SUNco. Two days later, a salesperson named Mitchell Sims sat at her dining table, giving a detailed presentation on how much SUNco’s offer could save her. By the end of the day, there was a contract in her email inbox for a 25-year project loan.

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But she noticed a problem: That contract put her on the hook for $160,000 over the course of the loan, with monthly payments nearly three times higher than Sims said she’d have to pay, according to Campbell, documents, and court filings reviewed by New York Focus. It made no mention of the government programs that he’d promised would help her afford the roof and panels. Campbell maintains she never signed the contract, but it bore her e-signature. She wrote back to cancel the agreement.

Less than a week later, she was emailed a nearly identical contract, with only the date changed. It again had her signature on it, though she said she didn’t sign that one, either. Not long after, she had a new roof and solar panels. And she was still on the hook for just as much money.

“Everything he told me sounded so good,” Campbell said. “Oh, boy, if only I knew.”

Now, Campbell is suing SUNco and its lending partner, Solar Mosaic, with the help of the Legal Aid Society. The lawsuit, filed in federal court on September 5, alleges that the companies forged her signature in order to push her into a deal she cannot afford. It accuses them of “fraudulent, deceptive, and abusive business practices,” as well as discrimination by age and race. (Campbell, who is Black and originally from Jamaica, lives in a predominantly Black neighborhood in southern Queens.)

SUNco’s lawyer, Joseph Asselta, denied the allegations in Campbell’s lawsuit. He said the company “made multiple attempts to communicate with her regarding her concerns” but did not receive a response.

“SUNco, a leading provider of solar energy solutions, is dedicated to delivering exceptional service and customer satisfaction,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “We take pride in maintaining transparent and open communication with all of our customers.”

Solar Mosaic’s press office said the company would not comment on “specifics regarding legal matters.” The office wrote in an email, “We strive to create a positive customer experience for every homeowner who chooses Mosaic to finance their sustainable home improvements.”

Sims, the SUNco rep who sold Campbell her panels, said in an interview that he did not remember her but denied any wrongdoing on his or SUNco’s part. (Sims is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit and was not aware of it when New York Focus contacted him.)

He said that numerous parts of Campbell’s story did not make sense. “A lot of people in life have buyer’s remorse,” Sims said. “She’s unhappy for whatever reason. I mean, that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Thousands of homeowners around the country have gotten a raw deal on rooftop solar. As recent press coverage has highlighted, the industry has relied heavily on door-to-door sales and other expensive, often aggressive marketing strategies, like online advertising and robocalls. Companies have also employed elaborate financial schemes in order to turn a profit, packaging and reselling loans in a form similar to the mortgage-backed securities that triggered the Great Recession. These trends have fueled predatory lending in the industry, according to an August report from the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as companies have used a variety of deceptive tactics to sign up customers.

State and federal governments have subsidized the industry for as long as it’s existed, chiefly through tax credits that help sweeten the deal for homeowners. New York has some of the most generous in the country, and the Inflation Reduction Act has extended the federal backing for years to come. Companies like SUNco are seeking to cash in. Campbell said the salesperson who came to her door specifically told her that President Joe Biden and Governor Kathy Hochul were trying to help people like her.

At the same time, scrutiny of the industry has ramped up dramatically. Over the past year, the attorneys general of Minnesota, Kentucky, and Tennessee have sued Solar Mosaic, which provides loans for solar panels, accusing it of using deceptive and illegal tactics to sign people up for loans. A group of California homeowners sued the company over similar allegations in April.

Solar Mosaic can now add Campbell’s lawsuit to that list. The company acted as the lending partner to SUNco, the installer whose representative pulled Campbell into the deal. Solar Mosaic and a third partner, WebBank, are administering her loan; they sent her the contracts she says she didn’t sign and, as far as she knows, she owes them over $500 a month starting in November. (WebBank did not respond to requests for comment.)

Founded in 2010 and initially crowdfunded, Solar Mosaic promised to lead a “clean energy revolution” by democratizing access to solar. At the time, rooftop panels were largely the province of well-off people who could pay for their systems in cash. But in the 2010s, lending companies like Solar Mosaic bubbled up, offering less affluent customers affordable deals to finance solar in their homes.

As Solar Mosaic grew, so did allegations that the company and its local partners have used unscrupulous practices. In addition to lawsuits, the company has racked up more than 300 complaints at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since 2019.

Claver Campbell shows the inverter box that is supposed to connect her solar panels to the grid. | Colin Kinniburgh

Claver Campbell didn’t know any of that when she first met the rep from SUNco, the Long Island-based solar and roofing company that Solar Mosaic was working with.

She’d already been dealing with expensive payments to another company that had installed solar panels on her home years prior. Those panels were supposed to reduce her electric bill, but they barely did, she said, and she had to pay monthly to lease them.

Sims, the SUNco sales agent, promised that his company would buy out her previous solar panel lease, according to the lawsuit. After federal, state, and local tax credits, he said, Campbell would pay just under $30,000 total for a new roof and solar panels, according to presentation materials shared with New York Focus. That translated to $184 a month — far less than she was paying for electricity alone. On top of that, she said, he suggested that Con Edison would end up paying her $1,000 a year for all the solar energy she would produce. (Sims denied making promises about her previous lease and annual payments from Con Edison.)

Campbell was sold. She entered her signature on the tablet then and there, she said, but she’d never seen the contract she received later that day, sent by SUNco’s lending partners Solar Mosaic and WebBank and bearing her e-signature. It had no reference to the tax credits and stated she’d have to pay $536 a month for 25 years.

Campbell, who shares her Queens home with her husband, adult daughter, and two grandsons, knew she couldn’t afford that. She lives on less than $1,500 a month from a combination of social security and retirement income from her last job at the Girl Scouts. (Her husband also earns a modest social security income, she said.)

She quickly wrote back to Solar Mosaic to cancel the contract, which they did.

Moments later, she got a call from Sims, who she said “scolded” her for backing out of the deal and persuaded her to let him visit again. He wrote out the terms he’d promised at their first meeting on a piece of yellow legal paper, which he dated and signed, and told her to ignore the documents she received in her email, according to the lawsuit.

Colin Kinniburgh

Colin Kinniburgh

A signed and dated sheet where, according to Claver Campbell, SUNco salesperson Mitchell Sims wrote out his promised terms of the solar deal. (Sims said the handwriting was not his.)

Sims denied visiting Campbell a second time. He added by text message that the writing on the yellow paper, which appears in court documents, was “not my handwriting!” Sims is named in at least three other lawsuits from New York City residents against SUNco. In each case, key parts of the residents’ stories echo Campbell’s. Two of the three were brought by homeowners in low-income neighborhoods of color.

Campbell, for her part, said she remembered Sims’s second visit clearly, including him “pounding” on the table as he wrote out his promised terms. As he grew increasingly agitated, she relented and agreed to the deal, again, but this time didn’t sign anything, she said. And this time, she ignored the documents that showed up in her email. Less than a month later, she had a new roof with solar panels on it.

After the installation, she received a bill from Solar Mosaic for $536 — the exact amount listed in the emailed contract — due in November 2024, after a one-year “promotional period” where she didn’t need to pay. Campbell tried to cancel again, but SUNco told her it was too late.

Campbell was horrified. She eventually learned that, not only had she received copies of a new contract — virtually identical to the first — that she said she never signed, but Mosaic had placed a lien on her home. (The lien allows Mosaic to reclaim the solar panels if Campbell defaults on the loan and makes it more difficult for her to sell or refinance her home until it’s paid off.) After she sent the companies a letter attempting to resolve the situation, SUNco went on to say that it had no intention of buying out her lease with the prior solar company as Sims had allegedly promised.

Campbell’s new solar panels still haven’t been turned on. That would require an official inspection that she’s too leery to agree to. The old ones, which she’s still paying for, are just sitting in her backyard. And, as far as she knows, she’s still staring down payments she can’t afford starting in two months.

“She was promised access to clean energy at an affordable price, and that’s not what the defendants are now trying to hold her responsible for,” said Claire Mooney, a Legal Aid attorney representing Campbell in the case.

Claver Campbell’s solar panels from a previous solar lease sit in her backyard in Queens, New York. According to the lawsuit, SUNco promised to buy out the lease and remove the panels, but has not. | Colin Kinniburgh

The lawsuit accuses the companies of fraud, discrimination, and violations of New York business law. It says Mosaic and WebBank also violated a federal law requiring certain disclosures for loan agreements.

Noah Ginsburg, executive director of the New York Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group for residential and community solar companies, said that New York’s overall track record with rooftop solar has been excellent, thanks in part to what he called the state’s “best-in-class” consumer protections.

“Most solar customers in New York state are happy customers. New York has some of the best consumer protections on the book, and consumer protection is something that we as an industry take very seriously,” he said.

But Ginsburg stressed that unscrupulous companies could cloud that reputation. “If there are bad actors, it undermines our whole industry,” he said. (Neither SUNco nor Solar Mosaic are members of the trade group.)

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New York’s energy regulator, the Public Service Commission, has rules in place governing distributed energy companies, and spokesperson Jim Denn said penalties for violating them could include revoking a company’s right to operate in the state. Regulators found in April that SUNco had violated those rules in the case of a Brooklyn couple who said they were misled by the company’s promises of a free roof. (SUNco appealed the decision, and a final ruling is still pending.)

Campbell, for her part, said she is still having trouble sleeping nearly a year after her first encounter with SUNco. She said she has high blood pressure, and it spikes every time she gets an email about her solar panels.

“I go through so much depression over this, I don’t know how I survive,” she said, tearing up. “I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. … I just hope nobody else goes through this.”

She later said that she had recently seen the company’s truck outside of a neighbor’s house.