Imagine deciding to build a house instead of simply looking for a house you like that’s already been built. It might sound like a good idea, but it can be tricky finding trustworthy people to do the work.

In this story, one person explains how their parents had a nightmare situation trying to get their home built. The contractor wasn’t the problem, but one business owner they hired to handle the paint and appliances really delayed and tried to completely stop the project.

Thankfully, the parents were smart enough not to believe everything they were told. They asked the right questions, refused to pay anything extra and knew when to talk to a lawyer.

Yes, they have their day in court, and it was glorious!

Keep reading for the full story.

Oh, so you want to steal OUR money for YOUR dying company? How about we do this!

For some background, I moved to another state after my mom decided to relocate her private company and the quality of the schools in our area deteriorated.

This all happened around two years ago.

We had rented a small house to live in while my parents began plans for construction of a new one about fifteen minutes away from our current house.

It was a tough thing, to build a house from the ground up, but my parents said it would only take around a year and a half for the house to be livable.

I think this guy is going to do something shady.

Enter our star of the show.

The money-stealer (let’s called him Hank) was the owner of a tiny company that sold, moved, and installed home appliances as well as painting and applying waterproof coatings to houses.

My parents, who were on a tight budget, decided that Hank’s company was affordable and had good reviews.

Now, I’ve never met Hank, but my parents have told me enough stories and let me listen to recordings and phone calls of him when they began recording their conversations when things got shaky (for legal reasons.)

I’m pretty worried about this contract.

Hank has my parents sign a contract that basically says that they’ll be paying for the entire thing through monthly payments. He promised them in the end, with the entire project finished and minimal problems, the total should stand at around 80 grand.

My parents signed the contract and our financial world began spiraling out of control.

Hank has sent some of his men to check our lot about a week before the deal was made so they could make estimates for the cost (judging the size, determining how much paint to use, etc.) Apparently, they were satisfied and told him about the situation, which was fine.

But no, three days after the contract was signed and Hank calls my parents to tell them that “the lot was almost twice as large as he had been informed and that he would have to add an extra TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS on top of our already steep payments for painting and waterproof coatings.

OP’s parents were smart enough not to pay.

My parents, being the financially-streetwise people they are, immediately started asking questions like, “why didn’t you just come to see for yourself” or “why didn’t you tell us this before we signed the contract?”

Hank just laughed and hung up on them.

My parents were worried, having signed a contract and all, but decided not to take legal action until he tried to pull something again.

We didn’t hear from Hank for another month after he did the dumbest thing I could ever imagine.

This doesn’t make sense.

We got a call from our building contractors saying that they would be charging us five thousand dollars to bring in a machine to remove the “quartz” that was under our lot so they wouldn’t run into complications to dig out our basement.

My parents were in shock, not understanding what was happening.

They told the contractors that they had brought in their architect and several members of the contractors to the lot to search for rock and quartz in the area, but found none.

“Sorry to hear that miss, but your architect just got off the phone with us and said you had an enormous quantity right under your lot.”

Ok, now it’s making sense.

After a half hour of explaining to the contractors that a mistake had been made, we asked if the architect had given his name during the call.

He said “Yeah, he said it was Hank.”

Hank is not our architect.

My mom was red in the face as she hung up and called Hank.

Hanks words made the situation worse.

Before she could say anything, Hank mentioned that he heard that the quartz under our lot would set us back three years in construction and said that we had to pay $100,000 in violation of expected completion time.

Expected. Completion. Time. What kind of bull excuse is that?!?

My mom immediately hung up and began gathering evidence to take legal action. Our family had to hire three lawyers to ensure that everything would be showed or stated in the trial.

Oh boy, the case was huge, as this man had just added $120,000 dollars to an eighty thousand dollar contract for APPLIANCES AND PAINT!

Hank’s excuse was pathetic, and I’m pretty sure, a lie.

To cut the long and boring court stuff, the judge ruled that Hank had clearly ignored his contract and simply tried to stack money against us in hopes that we would panic and pay it, and that it was illegal to charge fees outside of the contract he had made.

His defense was that his company was dying and that it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Well,” the judge said. “You should have thought of a smarter way to steal money from people.”

I was laughing my butt off at this point.

It worked out well for OP’s parents but not for Hank.

Hank has to pay us $100,000 for violation of a financial contract above 50k as well as pay another 15k for posing as our architect and trying to force the contractors to delay the construction of our house.

Construction resumed, and Hank’s company filed for bankruptcy a month later.

I heard he runs a cabinet company now, and from the sales record he’s posted online he is not doing well.

Talk about a shady businessman! I’m glad they took him to court and won.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a Glassdoor review that had an unexpected impact on hiring.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person has a question.

Another person is impressed.

This person shares their opinion.

It really was a wonderful ending to the story.

Hank isn’t the kind of person who should be allowed to run a business. I wish there were a law where a business owner who tries to scam customers is no longer allowed to own a business.

I’m glad the parents were smart enough not to fall for any of Hank’s schemes. Asking the name of the architect that called was definitely the right thing to do.

I also can’t believe how pathetic Hank’s excuse was in court. To claim he’s dying so he needed the money, as if what, the judge is going to take pity on him? How pathetic! He was obviously lying. I wish he’d gotten into even more trouble for that.

I hope he isn’t swindling customers at his new business.