The owner of a business responsible for what has been described as a massive bait-and-switch job scam had his contract terminated by a regional distributor for the products he was selling, an attorney for the manufacturing company said.

John Tobias, owner of a company that has gone under the name of American Air Filtration, had his contract yanked by Filter Queen of Bridgewater Inc., said Douglas Bordewieck, an attorney for Cleveland-based HMI Industries Inc. HMI manufactures vacuum cleaners and air filters, which were sold by Tobias' company.

Filter Queen of Bridgewater is an HMI distributor located in Bridgewater, Beaver County. The owner of the distributor, Dave Rich, terminated his contract with Tobias on Tuesday, Bordewieck said.

A message left for Rich at his office Friday afternoon wasn't immediately returned. Information has no listing for American Air, which the state Attorney General's Office said is in Erie. Likewise, there is no home listing for Tobias, who the Attorney General's Office said lives in Cambridge Springs.

The Attorney General's offices in Pennsylvania and Ohio are investigating American Air for running help-wanted ads in a number of Pennsylvania newspapers and at least one Ohio newspaper earlier this month. The ads touted $450-a-week factory jobs with American Air Line or American Air Lines which was relocating its national manufacturing plant to the area and was hiring 45 full-time employees. The companies have no relationship to national air carrier American Airlines.

As it turned out, those manufacturing jobs didn't exist. But more than 1,000 job-seekers mobbed motels in East Lackawannock Township, Meadville and Erie to apply for those jobs, only to discover they were door-to-door vacuum cleaner and air-filtration sales positions.

A representative of American Air told The Herald the ads were a misprint, but the Attorney General's Office said those claims are untrue.

As an independent distributor, HMI couldn't force Rich to fire Tobias.

"We urged him, that's for sure,'' Bordewieck said. "We have a trademark that's valuable to us that could be negatively affected. When we heard about these ads we got into contact with Dave (Rich) and said this is very hard to excuse or understand. I can't see how anyone can defend this practice.''

HMI is more than 60 years old and manufactures its products in the United States. The company is best known for its Filter Queen trademark for its vacuum cleaners.

In responding to why it took more than a week to nix his business relationship with Tobias after an investigation was started in two states, Bordewieck described Rich as a forgiving person.

"Dave is always willing to give someone another chance,'' he said.

Rich is probably going to take a financial hit from this, Bordewieck added.

"If Tobias owes him money, he's probably not going to get repaid,'' he said.