A Moncton man wanted to prove there are good and honest people in the city after hearing about people who say they were scammed by a person offering snow removal on Kijiji.

Codiac RCMP are investigating nearly two dozen complaints about a snow removal business taking money for the service, but never showing up to plow. Police believe the 23 complaints are related.

Josh Howe, the owner of Family Man's Lawn and Snow, says he uses Kijiji, the online classified site, to get a lot of his customers and he wanted people to know not everyone is bad.

Jeremy Plume says he was taken for $200 in the snow plow scam. (CBC) "I thought this is going to damage a lot of people who use Kijiji to make an honest living and nobody's going to call somebody on Kijiji to do snow removal and give them money when this is going on in our community," he said in an interview on Information Morning Saint John on Thursday.

"So I made a post on Facebook that if anyone knew anyone scammed, I'd be willing to do their snow removal for free until the investigation was done."

Howe said at first, response to his offer was slow, but that changed on Monday when one of the people who had lost their money in the scam posted a note to Kijiji thanking Howe.

He said since then he's been getting a lot of calls.

"I was just trying to do a good thing and show people there is still good people out there and not everybody on Kijiji is just out there trying to scam people," he said.

Generosity runs in family

Howe clears driveways with a push snow blower and said he was worried earlier this week when it broke down.

His mother-in-law called him and asked him to meet her at a local hardware store

Josh Howe gets to work plowing out the driveway of one of the people who says they got taken in by the scam. (CBC) "She told me to meet her at Home Depot and she bought me a brand new snowblower and told me she was proud of me for what I was doing," Howe said.

He is enjoying the good karma and says many of his new customers are offering to pay him.

Howe said that is up to them, he is just hoping to restore their faith and build a landscaping and snow clearing business of his own.

"I just started this year trying to get my own business off the ground," he said.

"I use Kijiji to get a lot of my customers this winter and I haven't had a call from Kijiji ever since this happened."