Customers: Bad contractor Mr. Brooks runs like a river after getting deposits
FOX 2 (WJBK) - Scott Brooks owns a big construction company in Canton, Michigan, called Contour Property Solutions. But many of his customers say they've paid him a large amount of money - but haven't seen the job finished.
Brooks says he doesn't want the people's money. But victims say otherwise, and they want their money back. For the owner of a big construction company, Brooks doesn't seem to know much about how to run it.
From jobs started and not finished to jobs where Scott takes a deposit but never starts the work, one thing is consistent: Brooks bails on his clients when the going gets tough.
Dawn and her dad Louie wanted to build a second-story addition on Louie’s Garden City home so they reached out to Scott Brooks of Contour Property Solutions. He said the company could do the job - but they had to put a deposit down. For the addition they wanted, it was large amount of money.
"He required 50 percent down," "$82,000 going out the door with empty promises."
The job was never even started. And, after a year of excuses, Dawn said they had no choice.
"We got an attorney involved to write a letter to say either do something or give the money back. Like every other response from him--nothing. He doesn't respond," Dawn said.
The attorney is David Rappaport and said Brooks should be charged with a crime.
"He took money he didn't earn and converted it to his own purposes," Rappaport said.
We asked Brooks about what happened with Dawn's addition.
"That's all something that's getting resolved," he said, but he didn't elaborate. "You have to talk to my attorney about that."
His line ‘talk to my attorney, Drew Norton’, is his go-to answer. So we went to Norton.
"Don't interfere with that or we're not going to have any conversation," Norton said.
But Dawn is far from the only unhappy customer. Candace said Brooks called her too picky, difficult, and erratic.
"I'm like, I’m erratic? I'm not erratic! You guys won't come and finish my house and you have $60,000 of my money which is what the contract was for!" she said.
Contour Property Solutions did some work inside her Westland house but wouldn't finish.
Norton sent Candace a letter about why it wasn't done.
"Your inability to make decisions, give direction and frankly, just changing your mind on a whim have made CPS' performance under the contract impossible," the letter read.
He also states, "CPS has ceased all work at the property" and signed it 'good luck.' Drew S. Norton.
Brooks said she fired them but her attorney, Steven Hyder, disagrees and is suing Scott for fraud and unjust enrichment among other things.
"He intentionally represented himself as a contractor, that he could do this work and come to find out, he could not," Hyder said.
Another victim, Scott, not to be confused with Scott Brooks, has the lovely addition of plywood in his dining room. It's there to seal off a part of his house Contour tore out more than a year ago to build an extra room. The job was started but again the customer says Brooks bombed.
"I never heard from them again except for me constantly calling them saying when are you coming? When are you coming?" Scott said.
Brooks again blames it on the customer.
"That's the guy who wanted to work on it under our permit and we asked him to stop and he wouldn't," Brooks said.
Andrea's got sinks in her living room after hiring Contour in February 2022. She paid close to $25,000 for two bathroom remodels. When the job still wasn't done by November, she sent Scott Brooks this letter saying either finish or you're fired. But he never responded.
"I sent it certified mail so I know he got it. And haven't heard anything since," Andrea said.
Scott's response was this one, too, was not his fault.
"Because I can't get her vanity in time," Brooks said was the reason.
She only waited 11 months.
Brooks was hard to catch. He has an office but doesn't spend much time in any one place and attorney Steven Hyder says he can't even pin him down to serve him. But we tracked him down at Kroger, where he was buying flowers.
We asked him, clearly, to talk about his business. The one he was wearing on his shirt - Contour Property Solutions.
He admitted to not being a licensed builder but having two license holders for the company.
"I'm not going to tell you that. You already know that information," he said. "Well that's something you need to talk about with my attorney. I don't have to disclose that to you. I don't have to have a license to own this company."
We don't think there's a license for Contour Properties.
"It doesn't have to be under Contour Properties. It can be pulled by an individual," he claimed.
We called an expert who knows contractor law. Attorney Mark Frankel said he's wrong.
"The contract has to disclose who the licensee is and provide the license number," Frankel said.
The purpose of that is so that it's not a secret who is doing the job and so you can’t just have a willy-nilly bunch of licensees to plug into jobs.
"It can't be a subcontractor or somebody they hired for the job," Frankel said. "It has to be someone who’s employed by that company and an officer of the company."
Which is where licensed contractor Anthony Bellicore comes in. Scott used him to pull permits on some of Contour's jobs.
"It was kind of personal when I left. Some things were said so I just, I canceled all the permits, and went my way," Bellicore said.
He said he wasn't an officer of the company and was just a guy doing jobs for Brooks. We asked why Brooks doesn't get his own license but Bellicore said he didn't know that either.
Way worse than the licensing issues is the issue of the missing money Brooks admits he took from Dawn and her dad.
"Well he's gotta give them the $82,000 back," Frankel said. "And if he doesn't, the Builders Trust Fund Act says the money is in a trust and can only be used for that job, and if he spent it on other things, not only does the company owe them the money, but he personally owes them the money."
But remember, Brooks said he's going to pay them back.
We asked him about the money and if he had it - but again, he referred us to his attorney, who, as expected, didn't want to talk.
