Westover looking into abandoned ClearFiber installations
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WESTOVER – The city of Westover is in the process of finding out exactly what it can do with the seemingly abandoned infrastructure installed by ClearFiber, the troubled Morgantown-based internet service provider whose owner was sentenced to prison in 2025.
The topic has come up during multiple recent Westover City Council meetings, prompted by complaints from residents tired of looking at the useless junction boxes, many of which are laying on the ground or in some level of disarray.
Attorney Tim Stranko said he and Public Works Director Jason Stinespring are looking into the matter.
"We have a franchise agreement that says that if they abandon the service that the property becomes ours," Stranko said. "Well, the trick there is to make sure it's truly abandoned. So, what Jason kindly agreed to do is we're going to put together a list of locations where your constituents have the abandoned facilities on their property. We'll provide the best notice we can to whoever's in charge of ClearFiber. I don't know if they're there, frankly. But we're going to look for that to make sure that everybody knows what we're doing. If someone has a claim to that property, they can make it. Likely, we'll have to run a legal ad ... And then, finishing the notice portion, we'll go forward with the removal of that equipment."
ClearFiber is a tradename used by DBI Networks LLC. According to the West Virginia Secretary of State's office, DBI Networks last filed an annual report in 2021 and had its business license terminated in December 2024 for failure to file.
Court documents indicate DBI Networks filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in July 2022.
The company's owner, Timothy Chad Henson, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay just over $1.4 million in restitution in March 2025 after pleading guilty of money laundering for defrauding a federal USDA grant program.
Prior to all of that, ClearFiber's local operations began running into issues almost immediately after arriving on the scene in 2017. The company was successfully sued by the Morgantown Utility Board for property damage. Another issue resulted in a suit with the city of Morgantown that was ultimately settled between the parties.
Stinespring said Westover crews routinely run into the company's handiwork, explaining, "They've run through all kinds of places they shouldn't go."
"They didn't do a very good job," he said. "When they were boring, they hit everything but the lottery. We're still finding sewer lines that they nicked when they were going in. There were just a lot of problems."