A Tale Of Lies and Theft

Here's what happens when you push an otherwise easygoing, sympathetic kind of person too far.
In September we hired a guy to do some work at the house - specifically, to re-insulate the walls and ceiling of the Imaginarium, as it's under-insulated and was pretty cold up there last winter. He quoted us a price, and wanted half down to buy supplies, preferably in cash. That's not an uncommon request from the individual handyman/contractor types, so I gave him the $1,100 in cash, and got a receipt.

He was supposed to start the work that weekend, September 19. But he never did it, and every weekend that he didn't show up, he had some new excuse why he couldn't do it that week. Except I began to get suspicious back in October when this had gone on for a month, and his excuses were starting to sound more and more like - well, just that - lame excuses, not legitimate reasons.

He was referred to us by the real estate agent we used when we bought this house, so I got hold of her to tell her what was going on. She contacted him, and initially told us that he was having some health problems that he hadn't wanted anyone to know about ('he's a private person' she said - we'll see why in a minute). Although I sympathized with his having health problems, I said "When you're holding $1,100 of someone's money and not doing the work, they kind of have a right to know the truth. If he didn't want to tell us, he should have simply said he couldn't do the work and returned our money." She agreed, but suggested we give him a few more weeks, at which time he'd told her he was confident he'd be able to complete the job.

Two more weeks went by, and we called him again this Monday. He didn't answer, but left a message back for us that he was still sick, but getting better, and anticipated doing the work in another couple weeks.

I tried to call him twice the next day, but just kept getting his voice mail. I was fed up and wanted my boss (an attorney) to send him a stern letter just telling him we wanted our money back. Problem was, no one had his address. I'd only ever had his phone number, and when he wrote out the receipt for taking our money, it wasn't on a business invoice or anything - just a plain white piece of paper. The real estate agent didn't have his address either.

I decided to do some research online to see if I could turn up a business address for him. After a lengthy search, I did find him - not in any place I expected to find him - in a local court system's online docket, with a string of traffic and criminal charges two pages long.

Turns out he'd had so many charges of driving with a suspended license that they'd permanently revoked it - three days after I paid him to do the work. And it was suspended even before they did that, so he knew when he came to my house, took my money, and agreed to do this work, that he didn't even have a valid driver's license to be driving around on. (He also had no insurance on his truck, as a side note - one of the charges was about that - which means there's a chance his truck may have even been impounded when he got that last charge).

He's also on probation for a felony burglary charge from last year. Which had nothing directly to do with my situation, except that (a) he's apparently proven himself capable of robbing people, and (b) being on probation, he should be even less willing to continue to break the law, as that puts him in serious danger of having his probation revoked and sending him to prison on that original burglary charge.

By the time I found all this out, Wednesday of this week, I was - well, seriously concerned wouldn't be putting it too strongly.

My boss recommended I tell him he's got one week to return my money, or I'm filing felony theft charges against him (a prospect that should have gotten his attention, as I said, another felony charge now will cause his probation to be revoked). I called him, got his voice mail (of course - he quit answering phone calls from us quite some time ago), and left that message. I also told the real estate agent what was going on, and she called him, too, and left him a stern message telling him he'd better pony up and do the right thing. (She was, by the way, mortified at this turn of events, and felt really bad for referring us to him in the first place, then encouraging us to trust him back in October - but it's not her fault, she didn't know any of this either).

A few hours later my real estate agent got a call from a friend of the guy - he wouldn't even call himself - with a message for me, which was: (a) he's pretty well hit rock bottom and doesn't care anymore, so if I file criminal charges on him, he's just going to run, and we'll never find him, and I'll never get anything out of it; (b) he spent the money, it's gone, so he doesn't even have it to give back to me; and (c) but if I'd be willing to not file charges he'd be willing to make payments to me till it was paid back.

Okay, really? First of all, this guy lied to me for two months, so why in God's name am I going to trust him now to make payments? Second of all, he now has no source of income whatsoever. The only truth he told in all this was that he is having health problems, so he hasn't been working for months, and has no other source of income. He's now wrecked his local reputation (a large portion of his business came from referrals from local real estate agents, and when this happened, a mass bulletin was sent out telling them all not to refer him anymore, so he lost his reputation and a large chunk of his potential business referrals over this), besides which he has no driver's license and maybe no truck - so he has little chance of continuing to generate enough work in this area to earn enough money to both live on, and pay me anything reasonable. And lastly, I don't want stupid payments - I need the money back so I can hire somone else to do this work. That's the other part of all this - it's still freezing in my upstairs, and we're still wasting money on heating costs, because the insulation work didn't get done, and I gave this thief the money I had to do it with, which it took us all summer to save up.

I wrote the friend an email (it's someone I know too, ironically), and my boss called both the friend and the guy who robbed me, and left a message with no room for doubt. He's been advised that I will not accept anything but the return of my entire $1,100, in cash, the way I gave it to him. And if I don't have it in my hand in one week, I'm going to contact his probation officer and tell them what happened (which will result in the revocation of his probation and, as I mentioned, probably eventually prison time), and then I'm going to file felony theft charges against him, which under the circumstances might also carry jail time, since it's now his second felony offense.

We gave the guy a week to get the money, because there's a slim chance that maybe, to keep himself out of prison, he can find someone - some relative or someone - who can loan him the money. Maybe I'll get at least part of my money back, which would be wonderful. Because otherwise, I'm out $1,100, end of story. If he doesn't come up with it, and I proceed (which I will), there's no chance then of ever getting it. Even if the court ordered him to pay restitution, he's got nothing - he's apparently destitute, he won't be working if he goes to jail, even out of jail he's got little chance of working again around here. He also has a civil judgment lien against him from a company in Pennsylvania from 6 or 7 years ago, so they'd get first crack at any asset he did have. He has nothing and no means to pay me back. I'll never see that money again, unless this last ditch effort works, and someone feels sorry for him and loans him the money.

Do I think it likely? No. But I figured it was worth a shot.

When my boss talked to the friend, the friend denied that this guy was going to run, to leave the state. But that is what he threatened the night before. I decided it was a chance worth taking, because he's not smart enough to go create a whole new identity for himself and start life over somewhere else. He'll get caught eventually.

And I am so pissed off about this. It's bad enough he lied to us for weeks on end, but I think what galls me the worst are two things - first, his cavalier attitude in having his friend tell me "Yeah, I spent your money, it's gone, and there's nothing you can do about it." And second, the fact that even as recently as this week he was still just blatantly lying to us, when he left the message saying he was planning to start the work in a couple weeks. He knew damned well he wasn't going to do this work, because he'd already spent the money - and hadn't bought any of the supplies necessary to do the work, which is in part what the cash advance was for. He had no money of his own with which to buy the stuff to cover his theft, and I sure as hell wasn't giving him any more money - he wasn't to get the rest of his payment until the work was done.

So he had no way to do the work, and he knew this, yet he still sat there and promised me he'd be doing it in a couple weeks.

He wants to try to get us to believe that he's really a good guy, and he's just down on his luck, rotten ex-wife took him to the cleaners in his divorce a few years ago, his health is wrecked from stress, but he really wants to make good on this ... while he blithely went out and spent MY money, then lied to me about it.

Life's full of disappointments, and people do unscrupulous things all the time - but I'm about as pissed off at this guy as I've ever been at anyone. Despite what a temper I can have, I'm usually actually a pretty easy sell for a hard luck story. If this had only involved a hundred dollars or so, I'd probably figure the guy had made enough of a wreck of his life that he didn't need me piling more grief on top of it, and I'd probably just write it off and walk away.

But for $1,100? And such blatant flat-out thievery and lying to me? No. He just crossed the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong way. I'll stop at nothing (legally) to hound this guy until I get whatever I can get out this - if not any of my money back, I'll at least make sure that he gets whatever punishment the courts find suitable under the circumstances ... and if he does run, I'll make sure he gets found. He's going to wish to hell he'd never heard of me, and I'm sure the grief I'm going to make sure he gets wasn't worth $1,100. I hope he enjoyed it, because he's definitely going to pay for it, one way or the other. (by legal means, of course)