Jaime Lawler wanted to move back to Maine after living and working in New Hampshire, so she answered an ad from a company called First Class Pool and Grass in Bangor seeking an office assistant.
“I assumed it was a pool-cleaning and lawn-cutting business in an office,” she said. “It looked legit.”
But she started questioning the situation on her first day, April 4. Her boss, Nathan Reardon, told her to meet him at the former Sears building at the Bangor Mall, where he is renting space and has been engaged in a fight with the city that has led officials to condemn that section of the property.
Lawler, 45, of Dixmont said Reardon took her up to an office and told her to fill an empty fish tank with water, which she did.
Later that day, Reardon, 44, sent her and another employee to an unmarked office on the second-floor of a building in downtown Bangor.
“There were a couple of desks and a couple of…
