On 11-1-07, Investigators of the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office served search warrants at the corporate headquarters and two offices of the California based business, “Ability Answering Service”.

This business with other names of, Ability Messaging Service, Ability Answering Service, Ability Messaging.com, has an internet domain and has the corporate affiliation to Chaffee Enterprises which is owned and operated by Raymond J. Chaffee of Bakersfield.

Tulare County District Attorney Investigators discovered that this business operates at a national level and has three offices in the counties of, Tulare, Merced and Kern. The answering service company provides communication services such as message taking, e-mails, faxes, call forwarding and paging to real estate professionals, medical facilities, construction companies and any party requiring out of office communication.

Acting on complaints of over billing, Tulare County District Attorney Investigators discovered that the business was in the practice of overcharging customers on a monthly basis. Tulare County District Attorney Investigators discovered that the excessive billing was accomplished by the use of a personal computerized billing program.

During a five month investigation, Tulare County District Attorney Investigators met with and interviewed former employees and managers of said business and gathered intelligence as to their business practices. Additionally, undercover Tulare County District Attorney Investigators traveled to the business an opened an account with Ability Answering Service and portrayed a typical commercial business customer. Over the course of several months, Tulare County District Attorney Investigators were able to gather and obtain evidence of the theft and were able to view additional costs added to invoices on unsuspecting customers.
Tulare County District Attorney Investigative Auditors noted that the over charging of customers on these billing invoices was random and was without a consistent pattern.

An audit of the Ability Answering Service customer invoices for October of 2006, revealed that 213 Visalia customers were victimized in one month. The loss is estimated to be in the tens of thousands of dollars and analysis is continuing. The number of potential victims is estimated to be in the hundreds.

On today’s date warrants were served at the business offices and headquarters of Ability Answering Service located at, 2105 24th St. #D, Bakersfield, 1101 E. Douglas Ave., Visalia and 2926 G St. #101, Merced, California. Tulare County District Attorney Investigators also served warrants at the residence of the Raymond Chaffee, on Saint Cloud Ln., Bakersfield. As a result, Tulare County District Attorney Investigators seized as evidence, records, invoices, computers, computer data and internal communications.

Based on the large number of victims that have been already identified, contact will be made with those victim businesses in the near future.

Tulare County District Attorney Investigators request that all other parties that wish to report losses prior to contact, and those that believe they have been victimized by this business and wish to inform Investigators of the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office can do so in writing by mailing their comments to:

Tulare County District Attorney’s
Bureau of Investigations
221 S. Mooney Blvd #211
Visalia, California
93291
Attn: Ability Investigation


Media inquiries can be directed to:
Tulare County District Attorney’s Office
Assistant District Attorney Don Gallian
(559) 733-6411