Hillsborough deputies arrest 50 in contractor sting

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. I always get excited and stand here with immense pride when I'm able to announce the successful conclusion of an operation but today I have to tell you I'm grateful and I'm even more excited because I'm hoping with today's announcement it will also serve as a public service announcement for our community to do more to safeguard themselves. Before I get started I have a few special guests I'd like to recognize Richard Kranker joining joining us today business manager United Association Local 123 plumbers pipe fitters and HVAC R technicians Senator Brian Nathan International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 915. thank you both for joining us today and for and for what you do for Florida trades in the audience we also have Keith Crockett chief of code compliance and contractors Licensing County Board of Examiners. Mr. Crockett, thank you for joining us. Thank you for everything that you do to help us safeguard this community. As the population increases in Hillsborough County and throughout the state of Florida, so does the demand for construction services. Unfortunately, so does the number of individuals that are unlicensed looking to exploit homeowners. Listen, I get it. They show up at your house. They tell you that they could start immediately. There'll be no permit and lengthy inspection process and that they're going to save you a ton of money. It sounds very attractive and sometimes they can be very convincing. But the reality is they take your money and they never come back. They take your money and they come back and do a portion of the work or they come back, take your money, they come back and do shoddy work. Let me be clear. This is never about paperwork. This is about safety. When you hire an unlicensed contractor to come into your home and do electrical work, roofing, foundation work, plumbing, just to mention a few, you're placing your families in danger. From June 2nd to November 1st, we conducted an operation that we've labeled Operation Bad Builder. We secured a location in Riverview. Our undercover detectives posed as local residents soliciting work, a variety of construction services that needed to be conducted there. We went to different online ads and asked them to come give us a quote to do some work. Some of the individuals that we were able to contact online and responded to their ads were individuals that the county had already received complaints on from doing shoddy work or taking advantage of the homeowner by doing exactly what we were just talking about, taking their money and never completing any type of work. There are several individuals that I could talk about. First, let me mention that the operation, I'm excited and proud that the detectives did an amazing job, that they were able to arrest 50 individuals. That's 50 individuals that were unlicensed coming into your home, promising all the things that we talked about, and never, ever had any type of license. When you hire a licensed contractor. You're hiring an individual who's taken the requisite testing and proving that they can do the work, whatever that particular trade is, without getting anyone hurt. 50 individuals were placed under arrest during this operation. 18 of these individuals are in our country unlawfully. There are several individuals that of our interest and note that I would like to talk about, but in the interest of time, I want to at least take the opportunity to discuss two of them. Calvin Wilson offered to perform HVAC work without a license. He quoted $14,000 for the job and demanded half up front. Residents complained that he left their homes worse than he found them. In 2023, he was arrested for the same thing in Pinellas County. He's a convicted felon and his criminal history is a violent one. Robbery, grand theft, aggravated battery. The second individual I want to talk about is Stephen Andreason, offered to perform plumbing and electrical work without a license. He quoted $2,500 to install plumbing, rewire and move an outlet, and install overhead lights with a $1,000 deposit up front and $1,500 due at completion. In June, he was arrested for domestic battery by strangulation. Another individual with an extremely violent past. Out of state arrests include kidnapping, robbery, sexual battery, numerous drug charges, assault with a deadly weapon on a government official. My point of highlighting these two individuals is that when you hire an unlicensed contractor, you have no idea who you're inviting into your home. What advice do we have for this community to safeguard themselves? Whenever you're hiring a licensed contractor, ask to see their license. Any licensed contractor will get excited. They're proud to show you their license. They work hard to pass the requisite testing to be able to perform these trades. And you can take their license and go to MyFloridaLicense.com and verify that they have an active license in Florida to do trades work here. Be cautious of online ads, social media, and online marketplaces. Get a written contract and never pay the full amount up front. And as always, if you ever meet with an individual and something doesn't feel right, walk away and contact law enforcement. I'd like to finish by thanking Major Colleen Handrick, the construction fraud and the property detectives who work so diligently on this operation. Ladies, gentlemen, job well done. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice during this operation. At this time, I'll invite Richard Cranker up to provide some comments. All right. Thank you, Sheriff Chronister. And on behalf of all the men and women of the Building Trades and Mechanical Contractors Association, thank you and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office for protecting the public's safety and health. This operation alone has probably saved future homeowners and current homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars. When homeowners unwittingly hire unlicensed contractors, they have little to no recourse other than digging into their personal savings or, even worse, taking out a massive loan to make repairs to damages that were caused on top of what they had repaired to begin with. so homeowners are the first line of defense whether it's roofing concrete electrical drywall plumbing or HVAC work homeowners can go as the sheriff said right to myfloridalicense.com and verify that the contractor you're considering actually has a current license in place and then furthermore request from them proof of insurance get proof of insurance from them and insist that the contractor pull the permits proper permits for the work that you've hired them to do and if they're unwilling to provide those things you can report them to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation which is there's a link on the same website where you can report them and I want to thank you again for this we we back you 150 percent for everything that you're doing we know this is an ongoing thing it's not a a one-off which is what we love and we appreciate very much thank you thank you mr. Cranker now I'll invite senator Brian Nathan to come up and make some remarks senator first I'd like to thank the sheriff and his team for the amazing work they've been doing like Richard said this is an ongoing problem so requires ongoing monitoring my business manager Jonathan Fielder would have loved to be here today because this is something we deal with on a day-to-day basis unfortunately he couldn't make it so you get me instead but right now there is this is a public safety issue you're inviting folks into your home that you don't know who they are you're inviting them to do critical work on perhaps the biggest investment that most people make buying their home you want to make sure that investment is protected and the best way you can do that is when you invite someone into your home make sure they're licensed you check their background make sure they have the proper insurance and bonds to do this work. I'll tell you as an electrician that I spent five years in an apprenticeship program to learn to do this work. You don't want to invite someone in off the street that tells you they've been doing it for six months because this is a great way to damage your home to the tune of tens or thousands of dollars. And if they don't have those bonds, they do not have that insurance, then it falls back on the homeowner to pay to have that fixed. And I dealt with this the other night. I have a constituent out in town and country. He came up to me, showed me pictures. shoddy electrical work that was done it was only found after the fact when he insisted on an on an inspection they had to reopen the walls they found work that I would have never accepted when I was on my tools and no electrician I know would ever accept it so this is critical work this is your home this is your family safety so I urge everyone to do what the sheriff and Richard had said verify these licenses don't let them into your homes if you don't feel safe if you don't feel confident they can do the work and again we love partnering with the sheriff this is not the first time we've done one of these and i don't think it'll be the last time and anytime he has an ask from us in terms of finding these folks we're here to help and we look forward to working with him in the future thank you thank you senator at this time we'll take any questions october 1st i'm sorry misspoke yes june for june 1st to October 2nd this is a mixture of both this is people that we went out online when we did our research found that they were unlicensed invited them to come provide a quote some of these individuals we specifically targeted because we already had complaints from the county that these that some of them completed shoddy work stole people's money and never completed the work so some of them we went out and searched for some of them were just random they were advertising their services and we invited them to come provide a quote and during the process realized that they had they weren't licensed contractors a lot of different charges from not having their proper proper unemployment compensation fraud policies that they're supposed to have insurance all the different licenses completing or soliciting to be a contractor without a license again we will provide all of that to you every individual their charges and their backgrounds will be provided to all of you in your press pamphlets. Yeah, absolutely. We we have people that are still trying and people in our community here still trying to recover from the damage and their lives being destroyed from the two hurricanes that we sustained. And now you have a contractor that comes in who's unlicensed, promising them the world. They're already desperate to get back in their home or to have their home back in one piece the way it was before the storm. And then these individuals come in and they're nothing but fraudsters. They they're there just to take advantage of them one more time. So talking about knocking someone down who's already down. Yeah, it's it's attractive. It's attractive when someone shows up at your house and you know, most of us hire trades and we're frustrated because they'll be there as soon as they can. And it's 90 days from now. You know, we want the work done now. They're saying, hey, we can get started immediately. You know, don't worry about the permit process we don't need permits there's no lengthy inspection process we'll get started immediately and then i think the most enticing factor is all the money that they convince us that they can save us we're going to save you a ton of money we're going to do it at a fraction of the cost and again i think that's that's a part of a criminal that convinces and victimizes our community in this in these cases are the homeowner the homeowner they're trying to get work. And again, this is a plea for us to join together to take the extra steps necessary to protect your families from this shoddy work and make sure you're not placing them in danger, but also to protect your hard-earned money. As you heard these two individuals talk, you're victimized. That money's not coming back, you know. So you're left with a house that's in disarray, is damaged, and on top of that, your money's gone. No, we see it throughout. A great question the question is have we seen this in certain types of the part of different parts of the county or a particular part of the county the answer is no we see it everywhere that's why we have a full-time construction fraud unit and they work diligently we asked to bring in some extra people extra detectives and work this collectively as our property division because the number of complaints continued to increase we knew we we were maintaining but we needed to be even more over more proactive and and again And when I stand here, I'm excited that we arrested 50 individuals at the same time. It's worrisome that we had to arrest 50 individuals who are out here preying on our homeowners. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful and safe day.