NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Imagine spending thousands of dollars and having nothing to show for it. Several families in Naperville who did business with a store called The Piano Experts claim that's exactly what happened to them.
Authorities are investigating potential wrongdoing by the owners of The Piano Experts, a store recently shuttered at 1163 E. Ogden Ave. in Naperville and in northwest suburban Buffalo Grove.
Peter Morse, a Chicago attorney and unofficial leader of a loosely knit group of the owners' alleged victims, believes the number of cheated customers is far higher than that. Morse calculates at least 150 people -- including one of his own children -- paid for and never received their pianos from the Naperville store. The group collectively may have lost as much as $500,000, Morse said.
The story told by Woodridge resident Jody Grimaldi echoes that of other Piano Experts customers. Grimaldi said he spent just more than $5,300 on Nov. 10 for a Baldwin baby grand piano intended as a surprise for his wife on her 30th birthday.
Store employees promised delivery of the piano within eight weeks, Grimaldi said. As that deadline passed, Grimaldi said he was told there had been delays at the manufacturing level but was assured the piano would arrive soon.
Grimaldi returned to the store Feb. 2, only to find it dark and abandoned. A sign in the front window announced "store closed," and instructed customers to call Piano Experts' telephone number and leave a message.
The store's telephone mailbox was full as of Monday.
Naperville police Cmdr. Dave Hoffman confirmed "about 20" customers have contacted the department concerning the shop's abrupt closure and their financial losses.
"The case is under investigation," and police "are still establishing whether or not there has been a crime," Hoffman said.
Cmdr. Steve Husak, the Buffalo Grove Police Department's public information officer, said he was "not aware of any calls or problems we've had" with the Piano Experts location in his village.
The Biasco family name has been prominent in music since 1939, when the Biasco Musical Instrument Co. was founded in Chicago.
Paul Biasco has four brothers, including an older sibling, John. All five have been involved in the family business at one point in their lives.
From 1987 through last year, the Biasco name turned up 13 times in records on file in DuPage County Circuit Court in Wheaton. The varying corporate names include Biasco & Sons, Biasco Music, Biasco Musical, Biasco Musical Instrument Co., Biasco Musical Instruments Company and Biasco Piano Co.
One or more of the brothers was named in each action as either defendant or plaintiff. The complaints included a contract dispute with an interior design company and two with the city of Naperville over Biasco business signs.
Colleen McLaughlin, who worked in the Illinois Attorney General's Office, has a private law practice in Wheaton, but knows the Biasco family well from her days as a consumer fraud prosecutor with the Illinois Attorney General's Office.
John Biasco, then operating Biasco Musical Instrument Co., or BMI, came under the attorney general's scrutiny in 1993, after allegations of consumer fraud and false advertising, McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin, who oversaw the case, said BMI in 1994 paid a fine and entered into an agreement called an "assurance of voluntary compliance," in which the company "agreed to cease and desist certain unfair and deceptive business practices."
Then in February 2001, John Biasco created a new company, Biasco Piano Acquisition Inc. He bought 15 piano factory and retail stores in Illinois and Florida from the troubled, Ohio-based Baldwin Piano & Organ Co., which would file for bankruptcy that May.
BMI officially went out of business in March 2002 and was dissolved the next January, McLaughlin said. John Biasco launched yet another business, Event Marketing Group, or EMG, in May 2002, and opened the Biasco Piano Co. store in Downers Grove.
McLaughlin, who had gone into private practice in 1996, went to DuPage County Circuit Court in 2003 on behalf of five other Chicago-area piano storeowners, who complained John Biasco was again using deceitful business practices that reflected badly on them and their industry. She filed a complaint concerning EMG's alleged violations of the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
The five store owners contended EMG and the Biasco Piano Co. store used false advertising, phony financing claims and the classic "bait and switch" approach, in which advertised pianos were never available for sale and customers were talked into buying other, sometimes more expensive models.
EMG also was accused of false advertising over the Internet, using fictitious price reductions to spur sales and selling some pianos that were advertised as being new when they were, in fact, used.
McLaughlin said she found herself amazed by John Biasco's often blatantly contradictory testimony in court. As an example, McLaughlin said John Biasco insisted at one point he considered BMI and EMG to be one and the same company, only to later protest that the terms of the 1994 voluntary compliance agreement did not apply to EMG because it was a new and separate entity.
Judge Bonnie M. Wheaton in December 2003 ruled in favor of the five storeowners, declaring EMG engaged in a "calculated and ongoing practice of deceptive advertising." She voiced her concern "that not only is there a likelihood that these violations will continue unless they are enjoined, I think there is a virtual certainty that they will continue if they are not restrained."
Biasco Piano Co. went out of business the next summer. McLaughlin said Angelo Ayala -- whom she described as John Biasco's "right-hand man" -- got some of the pianos from that shop in an alleged "improper transfer of assets," and then opened his Piano Discount Warehouse store not far from where Biasco Piano Co. had been.
"Our belief, based on our investigation," was that Ayala was a straw man, with John Biasco "still calling the shots" at the new store, McLaughlin said. Piano Discount Warehouse, too, eventually closed its doors.
The Piano Experts corporation apparently remained separate from brother John's enterprises, she said.
Morse filed a theft by deception complaint with Naperville police Feb. 2, informing them of his family's $3,000 loss to Piano Experts.
All of the affected customers either paid in full for their pianos or used the store's financing program to buy them, Morse said. He added he has learned Paul Biasco told police he owes pianos to 150 customers.
John Cordogan owns Cordogan's Pianoland in Geneva, one of the five plaintiffs in the 2003 litigation against EMG. He said he paid $70,000 as his share of the legal fees in that case.
Cordogan expressed anger at Wheaton and the attorney general's office, saying both have "done nothing" to protect piano buyers or merchants.
"The attorney general's office failed us," Cordogan said. "Bonnie Wheaton failed us."
"I know that they were aware of the issues in John's case" and were even "cooperative in giving us information about their brother" in the 1993 case, McLaughlin said.
"They knew the rules the attorney general set out ... back in 1994. I don't know that they have broken those rules, but if they have, then I hope the attorney general takes action to get an injunction and put them out of business permanently."
Morse was more pointed in his assessment of the situation, calling for the intervention of DuPage County's top prosecutor, Joe Birkett.
"The only way for the victims to actually recover their money would be for the state's attorney to prosecute," Morse said.
But that might not be enough for Grimaldi and his family. He remains angry over both his financial loss and the disappointment the loss brought.
"There is a true emotional bond with pianos, unlike other instruments or furniture," Grimaldi said. "My daughter and wife were absolutely devastated and heartbroken when they found out their piano was not coming. I'm sure many other people are in the same boat."
Questions or complaints about Piano Experts of Naperville should be directed to:
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan at 312-814-3000 Naperville Police Department at 630-420-6666 Additional information provided by Sun-Times News Group Copyright 2008 by NBC5.com. All rights reserved.
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