Clear skies. Low 58F. Winds light and variable..

Clear skies. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.

BEVERLY — One customer was a traveling nurse from Tewksbury who planned to use a renovated school bus to stay in as she traveled to different assignments during the height of the pandemic.

Another customer was a senior citizen in Florida hoping to supplement his retirement income with a small concession stand.

And one was a Michigan woman with multiple myeloma, forced to retire early and awash in medical debt, who wanted to sell doughnuts from a cart to help offset the bills not covered by Medicare.

Police and prosecutors say all three put their hopes — and their money — in the hands of Lawrence “Larry” Kudlik.

Kudlik, 62, of 2 Bartlett St, Beverly, is now facing nine separate criminal larceny cases in Salem District Court, filed over the past several months by Beverly police following an investigation.

Kudlik, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, is due back in court on July 12.

His court-appointed attorney, Mark Dewan, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Police say Kudlik took thousands of dollars from customers who found him online, on places like Facebook Marketplace, YouTube and Pinterest.

He operated a number of entities, with names like “Enable RV,” “Cottage Concessions,” “FarmNYard,” “Chicken Coops For Sale,” “Boston Concessions,” and “The Little Coffee Shop.”

His customers say Kudlik also used various spellings of his name — a Lowell couple who paid him $8,100 for a coffee cart knew him as “Larry Kilduk,” while a Troy, New York woman who hired him to convert a horse trailer into a mobile bar made a $4,250 payment to a “Larry Kuldik.”

“There are victims that come to him with a set budget, a dream an idea, a future, and their savings,” Beverly Police detective Darlene Prinz wrote in a police report filed in one of the cases, involving a North Carolina woman who had hoped to expand her cake and cupcake business with a concession trailer.

The woman had seen a YouTube video in June, 2018, and contacted Kudlik, who agreed to give her a discount price of $4,000 for a trailer.

After months of excuses — including having to spend money for a destination wedding — Kudlik sent a photo of a title to a trailer. That turned out to be someone else’s, however.

When she drove up with her father, Kudlik did give her $1,000 as a partial refund.

Then, her business failed during the pandemic and she was strapped for cash. But when she pleaded with Kudlik to refund the rest of her money, he had more excuses: he was being sued and online criticism had hurt his business.

Kudlik has at least two default judgments pending against him in Essex County, including a $62,720 judgment obtained in Salem Superior Court in 2019 by a Bermuda woman who had hired him to build a trailer she could bring to children’s parties for arts and crafts projects.

Last month, another customer won a civil judgment for $4,127 in a small claims case against him.

But many other customers sought to pursue criminal charges against Kudlik, telling police that they were offered excuse after excuse, until Kudlik became unreachable.

The Lowell couple, who paid Kudlik $4,700 as a deposit for a coffee cart, said they drove down to Kudlik’s River Street workshop after being unable to reach him. He persuaded them to give him another $3,400 for the project. They never got their cart.

The Tewksbury nurse said Kudlik told her he could convert the old bus she owned into something she could live in during traveling nurse assignments for $10,000 to $15,000, before eventually telling her the price would be $18,000 — which she paid.

After almost a year with no progress, she retrieved the bus.

A single mom from New Orleans paid Kudlik $6,500 — virtually her entire life savings — for a trailer for her food business. After multiple demands, she eventually arrived to pick up the trailer in March, 2018, according to the police report.

As she was towing it home, it began to fall apart on Route 128, according to the police report.

The Florida man who paid Kudlik for a trailer to sell doughnuts was out more than the nearly $8,000 he paid — he also purchased more than $5,000 worth of equipment and a leased space.

The Michigan woman who paid $8,000 to Kudlik for a trailer to sell mini doughnuts to help pay for her cancer treatment told police that Kudlik at one point tried to convince her to take a shaved ice trailer instead — a truck that a Nevada woman had paid him $8,600 for.

The Nevada woman said she’d ordered the trailer in 2017. Eventually, she flew to Massachusetts to see it, but saw only pieces of it.

Prinz said in her report that during her investigation she saw a “poorly built” trailer with a giant snow cone attached to it.”

The Nevada woman ended up hiring a private investigator for her case after Kudlik gave her multiple excuses, including being under stress.

The New York woman who had paid for a mobile bar told police that when she asked how the project was going, he “pacified” her by suggesting add-ons.

When she eventually requested a refund, Kudlik told her he’d had a stroke.

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis

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