‘Builder’ ripped me off for £98,000 – so beware

Andy Clark says…

I want  to raise awareness some scam builders operating in the area that have stolen 98k from me!

I would like to make sure everyone in Grantham and surround areas knows what they are capable of to stop anyone else getting scammed by them!!

They seem to change company name frequently yet is always the same operators involved clearly as they are doing this regularly and winning old names to avoid bad reviews.

The highlights (or lowlights in reality) of my/the problem are:

• I have paid £98k to a builder who has completed approx £20k worth of work
• The builder has now completely vanished, since September, and is not returning to complete the job
• It is my belief that they deliberately made it looked like they were working for me to make our contracted payments, once they had the majority without the last completion payment they vanished.
• It is my belief this was a deliberate scam from the outset to extract money from me and no intention of ever completing this work
• I am constantly told this is a civil matter as they started work. My dispute is starting the work is in fact part of their scam to facilitate the contracted staged payments and is clearly all part of the same fraud. 
• They have never paid Scaffolders, Site Toilets or Building Suppliers for anything ordered
• The cost to finish the work is roughly £80-100k which evidently I do not have as they have it so my house is ruined, I cannot fix it and I cannot get my money back
• They have caused serious damage to my house making it fully unsecured to the elements
• My house insurance refuses to cover the legal costs despite me paying for legal cover – as such I cannot afford to pursue my funds to be returned through courts, as such they will have just stolen £98k without recourse
• Neither my bank nor the recipient banks will reverse the transactions – despite it being my belief these transactions were not paid to EP Contracts as I thought they were, as such were fraudulent
• Action Fraud/Police/Trading Standards seem completely disinterested in the case as such no criminal prosecution will be brought.
• I have a reporter from the Express/Sunday Express who will write an expose on the matter, but that is unlikely to provide any result but at this point is the only shining light in an awful situation
• I am now going to be paying the £98k for the next 25 years with nothing to show for it
• So at this moment in time every mechanism a consumer has to be protected from situations like this have failed and simply help the fraudster commit the crime without punishment and enjoy my money whilst I pay it off.
• A change in the law is needed to protect people, this happens far to regularly and is not fair. We work hard for our money and I am not sure how this is fair to hard working members of the public to be wilfully robbed like this in broad daylight. 
• This man is now free to continue to do this to others at will and go unpunished! I will not be the only victim of this man to date or in the future, not to mention thousands others like him doing the same
• I have nowhere else to turn now so hoped you could help in some way!
• This isn’t a small amount of money, £98k is a life changing sum to create a dream home and now I somehow have to find a further £90k approx to complete the job, which frankly I do not have so we have no idea what to do if we cannot recover the funds which looks impossible at this stage.

Ours may be a lost cause and we will probably take years to recover from it and get the house to where it needs to be.

But something has to change to protect people and their money from idiots like this. It is becoming all too common and every mechanism that is supposed to protect you currently doesn’t!    I mean who when they have lost 98k and has a ruined house can afford a 30k legal bill only at the end of it to probably not get money back anyway!

Yet someone who stole the money walks free to just do it over and over again with no way to stop him!