Those who are scarring our trees and scamming our community, known as “woodchucks,” enter neighborhoods and look for signs of vulnerability:
Unkempt yards
Handicap-accessible tags or ramps
Elderly people doing yard work
Woodchucks then propose to do yard work, often for marked up prices and often without the proper skills and techniques of an arborist. Some woodchucks never return to do the work. There’s one example of a case with 10 co-defendants that took almost $400,000 from one victim over six years.
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/dont-fall-for-tree-trimming-scams/