Ksyrup
12-17-2021, 09:43 AM
I'll admit right up front, I'm not above a little schadenfreude, especially when I have a personal experience with someone who finally gets a little karma. So excuse me while I cackle in glee at the fact that this incompetent, greedy scumbag finally was stupid and greedy enough to get his comeuppance.
A bit of background... when we moved to Kentucky in 2006, we bought a partially finished house in a relatively new subdivision in a small town outside of Lexington. This was during the real estate boom, a couple years before the 2008 crash. This guy had already built the house behind us and was just starting a house two doors down from us. Everything seemed fine until we ended up having to delay closing a couple times because the house was not complete. This cost me over $3K in storage fees for all of our stuff which had been sitting since we sold our house in Florida back in May. But the house finally passed inspection and we ended up closing right after 4th of July.
Within a month of closing, we had a major rain storm come through, and that first night, we watched water pouring down the ceiling and back wall of the house. It was unbelievable, and there was nothing we could do except try to catch/clean it as it happened. Turned out to be a flashing issue with the chimney. I had him back out to fix it, which he claimed he did. Better, but not completely fixed. About 5-6 months after closing, he wouldn't respond at all. The folks behind us had issues he wouldn't fix, the people two doors down who had closed on their house a couple months after us had even bigger issues he wouldn't acknowledge.
To make matters worse, I got a letter from an attorney for some of his contractors trying to get us to pay for work they'd done for him that they hadn't gotten paid for. Fortunately, as an attorney, I was able to figure out pretty quickly that they had missed the statutory deadline for filing a contractor's lien, but through this process, I learned that this dude basically changed out crews every two weeks when no one was getting paid and stopped showing up to work.
About two years after we moved in, I brought in a real contractor to assess the house. When he drove up, the first thing he told me was that our front step was out of code and there was no way an inspector passed it unless he got paid off. That was before he even stepped foot in the house. Long story short, he and an architecture firm put together a report detailing all of the issues with the house, and we basically prioritized them and spent about $35K of our own money to fix the worst of it.
The people behind us sued him and tried to get us involved, but I knew it would be a waste of money. Dude was shielded by corporate law and we were going to spend more to pierce the corporate veil than we would get out of it, especially after the 2008 crash. They eventually let it go, sold the house, and eventually moved back to PA.
Anyway, I heard that his last housing project was to build a high-end house for some rich dude from NY and that he was advanced $100K which basically disappeared without much of any work being done, at which point he was fired. This dude's next move was to open a pizza shop downtown. I guess it did alright, but I heard stories of him harassing high school girls working there. And then one day... surprise, surprise ...it burned in a fire. And he collected the insurance money and never reopened.
After that, I would see him here and there in town. I guess he got involved in the car business as the finance guy at various places. The worst part was hearing all of the stories of them taking 2-3 week vacations, spending 10s of thousands on all sorts of stuff, owned several high-end cars, etc. His kids were in between my kids' ages and I had to hear about them driving corvettes and tricked-out mustangs and shit. The son dated a softball player, so I had to see him drive up in his $50K car at every game. He even totaled the car one time and within a week was driving a Mercedes or some shit. Infuriating, because I knew it was all being paid for through stealing/scamming.
You get the idea...
Well, last night it came across a bunch of newswire services (plus I had 3 separate people text me!) that a local man had pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with PPP loans he fraudulently obtained. Guess who?! He owned an RV business and had taken a legit PPP loan for it, and I guess figured that the process was so simple, he and a CPA (what a dumbfuck to get involved with this guy as a professional) concocted a scheme in which they created four other entities, dummied up payroll and tax documents, and claimed an additional $1.3M in PPP loans. And got busted. I'm betting they came after the CPA first and he/she flipped on him.
I'm telling you, I haven't been this happy since my second kid was born. I hope that motherfucker gets nailed by the judge. A guy I know who knows someone in law enforcement who works fraud cases in Lexington says the judge is tough and gave some ponzi scheme guy 10 years, so I'm hoping he gets something similar and it's not some sort of probation thing.
Me and the guy two doors down are thinking about buying a bottle of champagne and showing up to the sentencing hearing in March.
A bit of background... when we moved to Kentucky in 2006, we bought a partially finished house in a relatively new subdivision in a small town outside of Lexington. This was during the real estate boom, a couple years before the 2008 crash. This guy had already built the house behind us and was just starting a house two doors down from us. Everything seemed fine until we ended up having to delay closing a couple times because the house was not complete. This cost me over $3K in storage fees for all of our stuff which had been sitting since we sold our house in Florida back in May. But the house finally passed inspection and we ended up closing right after 4th of July.
Within a month of closing, we had a major rain storm come through, and that first night, we watched water pouring down the ceiling and back wall of the house. It was unbelievable, and there was nothing we could do except try to catch/clean it as it happened. Turned out to be a flashing issue with the chimney. I had him back out to fix it, which he claimed he did. Better, but not completely fixed. About 5-6 months after closing, he wouldn't respond at all. The folks behind us had issues he wouldn't fix, the people two doors down who had closed on their house a couple months after us had even bigger issues he wouldn't acknowledge.
To make matters worse, I got a letter from an attorney for some of his contractors trying to get us to pay for work they'd done for him that they hadn't gotten paid for. Fortunately, as an attorney, I was able to figure out pretty quickly that they had missed the statutory deadline for filing a contractor's lien, but through this process, I learned that this dude basically changed out crews every two weeks when no one was getting paid and stopped showing up to work.
About two years after we moved in, I brought in a real contractor to assess the house. When he drove up, the first thing he told me was that our front step was out of code and there was no way an inspector passed it unless he got paid off. That was before he even stepped foot in the house. Long story short, he and an architecture firm put together a report detailing all of the issues with the house, and we basically prioritized them and spent about $35K of our own money to fix the worst of it.
The people behind us sued him and tried to get us involved, but I knew it would be a waste of money. Dude was shielded by corporate law and we were going to spend more to pierce the corporate veil than we would get out of it, especially after the 2008 crash. They eventually let it go, sold the house, and eventually moved back to PA.
Anyway, I heard that his last housing project was to build a high-end house for some rich dude from NY and that he was advanced $100K which basically disappeared without much of any work being done, at which point he was fired. This dude's next move was to open a pizza shop downtown. I guess it did alright, but I heard stories of him harassing high school girls working there. And then one day... surprise, surprise ...it burned in a fire. And he collected the insurance money and never reopened.
After that, I would see him here and there in town. I guess he got involved in the car business as the finance guy at various places. The worst part was hearing all of the stories of them taking 2-3 week vacations, spending 10s of thousands on all sorts of stuff, owned several high-end cars, etc. His kids were in between my kids' ages and I had to hear about them driving corvettes and tricked-out mustangs and shit. The son dated a softball player, so I had to see him drive up in his $50K car at every game. He even totaled the car one time and within a week was driving a Mercedes or some shit. Infuriating, because I knew it was all being paid for through stealing/scamming.
You get the idea...
Well, last night it came across a bunch of newswire services (plus I had 3 separate people text me!) that a local man had pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with PPP loans he fraudulently obtained. Guess who?! He owned an RV business and had taken a legit PPP loan for it, and I guess figured that the process was so simple, he and a CPA (what a dumbfuck to get involved with this guy as a professional) concocted a scheme in which they created four other entities, dummied up payroll and tax documents, and claimed an additional $1.3M in PPP loans. And got busted. I'm betting they came after the CPA first and he/she flipped on him.
I'm telling you, I haven't been this happy since my second kid was born. I hope that motherfucker gets nailed by the judge. A guy I know who knows someone in law enforcement who works fraud cases in Lexington says the judge is tough and gave some ponzi scheme guy 10 years, so I'm hoping he gets something similar and it's not some sort of probation thing.
Me and the guy two doors down are thinking about buying a bottle of champagne and showing up to the sentencing hearing in March.