Perhaps. But I don’t think that’s standard MO for a prosecutor. Come election time, they’re judged based on how many people they convict, rightly or wrongly.
I really don’t want to see Jeff become a convicted felon. But I am hoping an indictment will get his ass in gear to repay me, and then I will ask the prosecutor to drop charges.
If he has no serious priors, a good lawyer will get it dropped down to a misdemeanor, with probation, and a restitution order. Even if he ends up with a felony, with a first offense I’d be really surprised if he does any jail time. I wouldn’t worry about him though, he made the choice to steal your money, and he’s probably done it to others as well.
A lot of the time in these scenarios where a low end scammer is scrambling you find drug use, especially meth, as the central issue. I would not hold out any hopes on recovering your cash unless he can convince a relative or friend to pay you so he can avoid prosecution.
You may be correct. When I called Jeff on the phone at the sheriff’s office, he sounded really “out of it.” At it was 3 PM on a Sunday.
That’s what I am hoping will happen… after the indictment he somehow finds the money he owes me, and then the charges are reduced or dropped.
I just wish the deputy would get back with me. On Tuesday he said he would be talking to the prosecutor “in the next day or two,” and I haven’t heard back from him.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much in regard to hearing from police. Generally the criminal justice system grinds very slowly, especially for situations that don’t involve violent criminals who have been taken into custody and require immediate attention.
Assuming you have the audio from the call at the sheriff’s office, the paper trail of your conversations with Jeff, it’s doesn’t sound like it’s a very questionable fraud case. It’s pretty straight forward. Prosecutors usually don’t pass on easy crimes, even minor ones. If this guy is into drugs your money probably isn’t coming back because a drug addict will never be able to accumulate $2300 cash without spending it on drugs before he has it, so there’s that. They can require restitution an garnish as part of the criminal process, though.
A quick summation of a long and terrible situation I was in: A grandparent died, due to a parent predeceasing my grandparent, I ended up being one of the heirs (the will split the estate equally among all of the grandparent’s children, or if one of the children had predeceased them, their children inherit their share in equal parts–so I was set to inherit a split of my dad’s share split among my siblings.) Anyway, the executor was my aunt. Her husband was a life long gambling addict. Long story short, the money all disappeared as the estate was being settled. We can only assume it was gambled away, because my aunt and uncle never “showed” any benefit from the theft (it was six figures), our assumption is the uncle blew it all probably started with him believing he could “make money off the principal” at the tables and we’d never know he’d gambled it at all. My aunt as executor was ultimately convicted a felony (no jail time, but probation and she has a felony on her record) and they did require restitution. It was a very small amount though, and will never add up to the amount she stole, but they did require she continue to make payments.
I just wanna say, a whole lot of folks seem to assume drugs are involved, and I think they underestimate how easy it is to get behind when running a small business.
As some have pointed out, handymen/small contractors partly make their way by offering a lower price, which means lower profit margins. that means he’s cutting corners on some of his expenses.
So he has, for example, a pickup that’s 10 years old, and he isn’t getting it all the maintenance he really should.
So something really important breaks on the truck. $1000 repair.
He’s gotta pay that, he’s gotta have a truck, and it’s not like he’s got a spare he can use until his truck is fixed.
So he gets it fixed and gives his entire profit from his current job to his mechanic. But that was the money that was supposed to go for next month’s house payment. So, to avoid the late fees, he uses some of the next customer’s supplies money to pay the house payment. He figures instead of buying all the supplies at once, he’ll buy in three batches. So he spends a third of the money on supplies, the rest on his house.
He is NEVER going to catch that $1000 up. (I mean he could, but he probably won’t.) Further, the hole is going to get deeper: buying a third of the materials at a time probably costs more, even if it is only paying three delivery fees. And at some point he’s going to have to decide to let the power bill ride for a month and have a late fee.
So he keeps paying things late, and paying more because of it, and it just keeps getting worse.
Yes, addicts can dig a hole very fast, because nothing is more important to them than their fix. And gambling addicts may have it worse than drug addicts, because the heroin addict has no plan where putting heroin in his arm is going to get him enough money to cover his debts.
But small businesses often run on a very tight budget, and an unexpected expense can easily start a downward spiral.
Just a data point:
If the Criminal Justice system thinks you are trying to use them to extort money, don’t be real surprised if you don’t hear from them.
Telling them (or us) that, as soon as you get your money back, you will drop charges makes it sound as if you think of the police as ‘enforcers’.
Quite often, they don’t like that.
If YOU aren’t willing to pursue the case, why should they?
Alternately, if you DO present a case and agree to testify/provide Disposition, don’t be surprised if the Prosecutor decides to Prosecute - even if you ‘change your mind’ when given $2300.
Which is much less that the County would be out if they arrest/process the idiot.
The police are NOT your ‘hired thugs’ to recover stolen money.
Sorry, but I think you can kiss your dollars goodbye.
Without trying to take a higher moral ground id you do any research on this guy beforehand? I try and hire people from the local free rag as they seem to be after work. As I have inferred, it is easy to get caught out.
I’m surprised that no one has suggested that aside from taking all legal means to recover his money, why doesn’t the OP try to generate some publicity about this scammer? The object being to make it very difficult for him to find new suckers to scam. To alert the public in the same places he advertises so people would be unlikely to do business with him.
I would first consult a lawyer to ensure I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I’d ask the lawyer if it would be reasonable for me to try a number of methods to generate some newsworthy ads or stories about this guy.
Maybe I’d try to find a local newspaper columnist who might want to do a story advising readers not to get scammed and carry my story in the paper naming this guy.
Maybe I’d find out where he is currently advertising for suckers and I’d place my own ads as close to his as possible telling the public what he did to me.
In other words, I’d do everything I could to keep embarrassing this guy and making it difficult for him to scam other people until he either paid me back or left the state.
Why are you so consumed with the well being of a guy who has clearly screwed you? With all the ‘second’ chances you have given him he has zero incentive to pay you back or do your work. The length of time that this has dragged on is long past the time where he could have shown something, anything, if he were serious about doing the work.
If you want to do something, you call Jeff and you tell him you are going to small claims court or the police tomorrow, and then do it. He will try to delay again and that is all it will be, a delay. Bite the bullet and do it. Don’t let Jeff lead you around any longer.
What cheek are you pulling this out of? Police ARE absolutely behavioral enforcers in many cases. The police and other authorities often consider it a job well done if a scammed party who lost a few hundred or a few thousand dollars can be made whole by the scammer without going to court.
I we’re are talking about big fraud or assault cases with substantial investigation and time involvement that’s different metric, but if a tiny little case like this can be resolved with the threat of prosecution they are as happy to see it vanish.
Any update on this saga, CrafterMan? It is a most interesting read!
On November 15[sup]th[/sup] I received this email from the sheriff’s deputy:
So at this point Jeff knows law enforcement is looking for him on this, and he is obviously savvy enough to know he doesn’t need to go in to participate in a police interview. So they’re going to have to decide if the information they already have is enough to justify charges against him and get an arrest warrant or if they lack sufficient evidence.
You might also consider filing a complaint with your state’s registrar of contractors (or whatever the equivalent body is). In some states, there’s a recovery fund designed for people financially harmed by unscrupulous or incompetent contractors without insurance. If your state is one of them, the registrar of contractors can give you more details. If nothing else, I’m sure they’d be delighted to hear about either a) someone holding themselves to be a contractor without a license or b) a contractor actively committing fraud against clients. Most states keep a list of the worst offenders on file for people to check before hiring.
Any updates?
I last heard back from the deputy (via email) on December 3rd:
And that’s the last I’ve heard from the deputy.
On December 17th I emailed the deputy, asking for status. He never got back with me.
This pisses me off. So now what do I do?
Maybe contact a lawyer and see if filling suit would be wise? Or small claims, or (seriously) Judge Judy or another court show.
Go down in person? Not in a threatening manner, but I’ve found face to face works very well.