JAK Construction Management Corp

Jason Klein, the owner of JAK Construction Management Corp, has conned and defrauded me and stole about $100,000.00 from me after I hired him to build a pair of 2 family homes in Guttenburg, NJ. Around March of 2011, Jason Klein came highly recommended by the architect who designed the homes and helped get them approved. ?He is a well known and reputable architect. Basically what happened was that Jason underbid the job (his price was one of the lowest bids I received). ?I think he knew that he would get the job yet had no intention of completing it. Rather, in my opinion his intention all along was to steal as much money as possible from me. The facts are: Jason claimed that in order to secure this pricing, I would have to pay a significant amount of money up front. Originally he requested a lot more but I was able to negotiate this number down to $45,000 per property. In his schedule, he called it "Down Payment" and "Mobilization". ?Jason Assured me that this money would go toward deposits for materials and down payments to subcontractors to lock in pricing. Jason said it would take about 6 months to complete both jobs. ?He signed the contract on June 14, 2011 and officially resigned from the Job on December 12, 2011. Within those 6 months all that was done was demolition of both properties, some excavation, and some rock removal. ?In Jason's proposed budgets, Demolition for both properties totaled $18,200 and excavation for both properties totaled $8,200. Assuming he has completed demo and excavation on both properties, it should only have cost $26,400. We paid him a total of $34,095.50 for demolition and excavation (he convinced me to do so even though excavation was not complete). ?On top of this I ended up paying an extra $9,700 for excavation ( for "unexpected extra excavation" like exposing rock on 70th street and moving dirt from one side to another on 68th street). All in all, I have paid JAK Construction Management $138,580.50. If the Reimbursable expenses are subtracted, he is left with $119,595.50 for work that he himself has budgeted at $26,400.00. After Jason's walking off on the job, I requested to be reimbursed the down payment and mobilization money but he claimed it was all spent on the job. I have tried to resolve this amicably many times but Jason Klein has fed me lie after lie. Now I have to spend more money on attorney fees and more time putting together reports like this. All I am asking for is to be reimbursed what is rightfully mine. Jason Klein is a thief, a con artist and a fraud. ?At the very least, he should be exposed and his license should be revoked. He should not be allowed to take another contracting job. ? More proof of this fraud (and a direct breach of his contract) is that he never even applied for permits for this job. After going to the town hall to get all the paperwork together, I realized that he did demolition under the permits that I submitted with a different builder. This is not only a direct breach but it is also illegal. Also, I later realized that he removed the fence that was protecting the property. I found out that it was removed after receiving a summons to appear in court for not having a fence on a construction site. One of the claims that Jason made was that he spent over $1,000 on fencing. I rented a fence from the same company that he rented from and it costed about $588 for the year. That is the minimum and it includes enough fencing to secure both of my properties and at least a couple others.