Copyright cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The owner of a Cleveland Heights clock-repair business faces felony grand theft charges after authorities say he scammed 15 customers out of approximately $26,000. At least one victim learned about the business, Cleveland Clock Repair, through a feature published on cleveland.com in 2021, according to Cuyahoga County prosecutors. A grand jury on Friday indicted the store’s owner, Michael Daniel, on six felony counts stemming from alleged thefts that occurred between January 2021 and October 2025. As of Tuesday, records show the business is now located in Wellington. cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer attempted to reach Daniel for comment. Court records do not list an attorney representing him. Daniel, 37, is scheduled to be arraigned on Nov. 10. According to prosecutors, most of Daniel’s alleged victims are elderly residents of Cleveland’s suburbs. In one instance, a 71-year-old woman paid upfront for repairs and was told it would take two months to fix the glass on a clock that had belonged to her great-grandmother. More than a year later, the clock had not been returned, prosecutors said. In another case, a store employee retrieved the internal components of a customer’s grandfather clock — a 72-year-old vintage Warmink — for repairs. The customer paid a deposit, and the work was expected to take two to three months. However, prosecutors said the store stopped communicating and never returned the components or the deposit. The Cleveland Heights police investigation into the business remains ongoing, prosecutors said. Daniel opened the shop in May 2021 on Coventry Road after previously operating a home-visit repair service. At the time, he expressed hopes of expanding to multiple storefronts. “I definitely see a need for what I do, as long as there’s an older generation that can tell their children how valuable these [clocks] are,” Daniel said in 2021.
