Editorial: Consumer protection

They work in hospitals, drive school buses, and work for the county. For someone to come in and tell them the water will make them sick and take their money like this is a sin."

Mary Ann Durso of Habitat for Humanity, which helps the working poor attain home ownership, is right.

Charging premium prices for home water-softening systems and their monthly upkeep under dubious pretenses -- that the water can make you sick, even in areas where central systems are deemed safe -- is a sin.

But is it a crime?

Steve Russell, Southwest Florida's state attorney who was elected last year in part on an anti-fraud platform, ought to find out. An enterprise story in the Daily News last Sunday shed enough light on a Fort Myers-based firm, Oasis Systems, and its affiliated finance firms for Russell's Economic Crimes Unit to get started.

Former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth showed the way in the Tampa Bay area in 1999 by exercising the state's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act against a similar-sounding enterprise.

A lawyer for Oasis invokes Moses' "Let my people go" when describing a local Haitian rights activist who is trying to get help for clients who say they did not understand what they were getting into when signing contracts in a foreign language -- English.

"Let my people go" can be aptly applied by an investigative team motivated by the desire for fair play.

Working-poor immigrants probably don't have lawyers to advise them of their rights. The State Attorney's Office has the know-how and the firepower to get to the bottom of this. Maybe the water-softener enterprise is correct: there are lots of customers with buyers' remorse getting stirred up by a Haitian consumer protector. Or maybe the firm is wrong.