This Contractor destroyed his Customers

this guy was it became pretty clear that he was going to screw me but I got my revenge on him good morning one and all my name is Stan genetic I've been a contractor for over 35 years and running heavy equipment for 40 something years and I'm going to be telling you some stories from the field everything that I'm about to tell you today is an actual true story that actually happened I will tell you what the contractor did to screw over his clients and then I will tell you the outcome of that situation and since these are true stories they're not always going to have Happy Endings so without wasting any more time let's get right into today's video now this first story is about Doug who was a commercial contractor but he figured out a way to screw other commercial contractors and residential clients that he had on his books but he didn't use the same technique for each one Doug got so proficient at screwing people over that Doug was able to build his own rental center right from scratch and Doug still operates it today now his technique for screwing over commercial contractors was what I would call the double suit the first time I met Doug was when I was developing his site I had to do all the infrastructure all of the Excavating everything that I had to accomplish on his job came to about $220,000 and it became apparently clear to me that I was not going to get paid so I walked off from the job Doug hired a general contractor to finish his job site why not because Doug didn't have a plan on paying this guy I happened to know just by coincidence the general contractor that Doug hired Doug the general contractor that Doug hired hired another Excavating contractor to finish off the project here's what doug did to get out of his bill Doug took my bill which was $20,000 and decided that he was going to sue me for double Doug took the bill from the general contractor that he hired and sued him for double Doug took the bill from the other Excavating contractor that came in and guess what he did sued him for double Doug loved to sue people now the general contractor that Doug hired since I knew him came to me and said hey what are you going to do and I said hey I'm not going to be I'm not going to roll over and let this guy get away with this I'm going to fight it what are you going to do and since they're facing a lawsuit for double it gets to be a bit scary because if you lose not only do you not get paid for the work you've accomplished now you've got a to pay somebody twice as much as what your worth your work is worth he backed away off he just backed off from the bill said he wasn't going to charge them the other Excavating contractor did the same thing and they said to me what are you going to do dirt monkey and I says well I'm going to come here I'm going to fight it that is a big dragon fly I said I'm going to fight it here's where the story gets really interesting I hired an attorney and the attorney I hired out of sheer coincidence already had a lawsuit going against doug because on the residential side of things Doug had been screwing over his residential customers and here's how Doug had screwed over his residential customers he would take their deposit he would deliver their materials and then he would disappear he took uh the deposit he was doing a kitchen remodel at the same time that I was fighting him another residential CL client was fighting him as well and the attorney shared the information with me maybe he wasn't supposed to but he did I'm not going to tell you the attorney's name so I'm not getting the attorney in trouble but what I found out was that Doug took a big deposit to do a kitchen remodel and instead of doing the kitchen remodel went to Disney World I can't make this story up so Doug's big way of getting out of paying his bills was to take every commercial CL contractor that he worked for and sue them for twice as much as what he owed them hoping and betting that they would back off from their invoice and as far as my experience goes two out of the three of us did on the residential side of it he would take the deposit he would deliver the materials he would start the work and then he would just disappear and leave now since this is a real world story I ended up going to court and I did collect the money that was owed to me because I hadn't done anything worth suing me for double on the flip side of the coin the general contractor that backed out of it had got paid nothing so Doug had saved all the money from the general contractor and the other Excavating contractor that Doug had hired also didn't collect a single dime so Doug kind of had a home run on two out of three now what happened with that residential client that Doug had screwed over with that kitchen remodel I can't tell you because I don't know that was out of my pay grade this next story is just unreal if it didn't actually happen and I was there I wouldn't believe it myself I had been digging a monstrous basement this customer wanted I think it was like an below ground tennis court or something it wasn't my first below ground tennis court that I was doing by any means but this thing this basement was massive that I was digging for this client and I I did my dig that I was hired the owner of this house hired a general contractor the general contractor hired me the general contractor hired a concrete company uh the general contractor hired all of the subs as what a general contractor does here's where it gets really good cuz I wasn't the only one that got screwed there are so many people that got screwed on this deal and I don't mean good in a good way the story just unreal I completed my dig the concrete guy came in and he poured this monstrously big basement it was massive the materials to start framing showed up and this is what the general contractor did the general contractor showed up at my house with a check in his hand handed me the check and said sign the lean waiver now this isn't the first time I've been in this situation where I've had to sign a lean waiver and do whatever I do right so I signed the lean waiver but I had this nasty feeling in my belly I did it anyway because he said now I'm going to go over and get the lean waiver signed by the concrete company so he did that then he went to the the material supply house these are the guys that provided all the framework the big Lumber Big Box store right provided all the framework for this thing he had gotten me concrete guy and material supplier that I know of to sign off on our lean waivers he then took the lean waivers to the bank said I've got these lean waivers I've paid these guys I need to cover these funds so he went to the owner's Bank the bank gave him the money I don't know exactly how much it was but it had to be a lot of money probably a 100 or plus th000 by the time I got my basement all this stuff put you put all this together the GC collected the $100,000 from the bank and then he cancelled my check he canceled the check to the concrete guy he canceled the check to the material supply company and he fled the country never to be seen again the owner of this house came to me in almost tears what do I do and I didn't know I mean I had never seen a situation like this before in my life and I said I I still need to get paid I haven't gotten paid and none of us had actually technically gotten paid So what had happened was the GC had collected the lean waivers taken the cash canceled the checks fled the country but the homeowner is still left holding the bill because by law and by rights the lean waivers aren't effective until the actual funds have hit the bank and this GC timed it just perfectly right so in this case I don't know how this ended I know that the my job my portion of the job was done so I was of it because my basement was dug backfilled everything was good I don't know what happened to it but I do know that for the longest time that the homeowner was losing his mind unfortunately and I tried to help this guy track him down I think he fled to Canada I don't know where this guy went but it the story didn't have the happy warm fuzzy ending that you would want it to have unfortunately but that is another way that a contractor can screw a customer that's unreal if these guys just worked as hard at actually helping a customer as they do hurting a customer there'd be so many more successful people in this world now this next story happened to me with that roof right there [Music] hey Franky that looks good you want to hear a good story yeah all right you got to walk with me then okay all right Frankie actually put my roof on right you put the on the house right here you do know you weren't the first person I chose to put the roof on though right y all right come on with me here Frankie so I actually before I had Frankie come in and put this install this roof for me cuz this was back when you and I were just first starting to work together yep right first time up here yeah I did a little bit of work at your cabin up north yep a little bit here a little bit there and that was what 15 20 years ago or so yep so I hired another contractor Frankie and I knew the other contractor so I felt pretty good about this guy coming in to install that roof for me I had done jobs for him and everything was he seemed like a real straight up kind of guy and the building he owned this was one of those caveats was I was looking at you know as I'm looking at contractors does he work out of the back of his van or does he actually have a solid brick and mortar store this guy had a brick and mortar store that was three stories tall and like a half a block wide it was massive this guy was Hy super successful he came in and he gave me a bid to put that roof on and I think the bid was what 45 Grand or something like that yeah it was a big bid but it was a guy I knew so I went with him I'm like yeah go ahead I gave him half of the money down now he promised me a start date I had a receipt I had my um I had my my proposal and I kept a a text chain going with this guy and my start date came and went and then the new start date came and went and the new start date came and went and the new start date came and went so it became pretty clear to me that this guy didn't plan on coming out and doing the work and doing the work yeah and so I asked for my money back and that that then I started to get ghosted oh excuses oh no we'll have it oh no this all that always an excuse why he couldn't give me my money back so I said enough is enough is enough this guy was it became pretty clear that he was going to screw me but I got my revenge on him and this is what I did is I went to the cuz he was a general contractor so I went to the state that held his license and I brought the state I met with the state I went right into the state office I brought the state The Proposal I brought the state my receipts I brought the state a a copy of all the text messages and the state looked at me and said actually we know this guy this guy's on probation already for doing things yes the state pulled his license oh really he couldn't operate anymore I mean and he had a massive brick and mortar store to support multiple Crews to that he had to support and the state said nope you're you're out of business until you start to take care of some of these issues that's the only way I was able to get my money back oh you did get it back I got my money back from him besides that I knew where he lived yeah I did I knew where he lived because I would actually knew him well enough that I would deliver wood to his house because when we were cutting down and felling trees I didn't have anywhere to take it I mean now Frankie takes all my trees so I would bring him everything that I couldn't handle right and I would deliver it right to his house I knew where everything I knew this gate I knew everything about this guy right so he he really had to do something he had to pay up so the the uh take the deposit and run is another way that these guys can uh and give you excuses is another way these they don't always work for them either though no like this no I think I got lucky but pulling a contractor's license having that license pulling that contractor's license one of the things I'm going to recommend to guys if you're hiring somebody is just make sure they're not working on the back of a pickup truck cuz pickup trucks are pretty mobile and they they they can hit the road pretty easy so hey like me yeah like like like Frankie but I know where Frankie lives too I know where Frankie lives see here's the deal on this one I have a mail okay this is back side your mailbox uhhuh letter or letter for your uh newspapers mailbox newspaper mailbox mailbox for the newspaper CU I side that way I can run my angle okay same thing mailbox mailbox mailbox newspaper all right if you can't figure it out Frankie is building a new mailbox holder for me all right guys well that's my stories and I'm sticking to them because they are all absolutely true but now it's your turn I want to hear your stories cuz you guys have some [Music] humdingers lay it on me guys hope you guys stay safe out there stay smart and uh a rising tide raises All Ships so when we're willing to share our stories good bad and in between I think we all benefit in some way way shape or form that's this one God bless go get him you guys hit that subscribe button and one last thing the video idea for this came from one of you guys that said hey you know what would be great a video on how contractors screw people and I said dang you got it so if you guys want to hear something or I got an idea for a video just lay it on me maybe we can make that happen God bless go get him you guys we'll catch you on another one