Wichita-area roofer fined $20K after woman complained work never started: DA filing
A local businessman has been fined following allegations by the local prosecutor’s office that he failed to perform roofing work a customer had paid for.
The Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, in a consent judgment signed Wednesday, alleged Son Scapes owner Jared Schultz wasn’t properly licensed to replace a roof and didn’t tell a customer that she had three days to cancel the contract she’d entered into with him to do the work.
Reached by phone Friday, Schultz said “a lack of communication” with the customer, who he had worked for before, “and different things played a role” in delaying the start of the roofing project. He said he had been dealing with a family death around the time of the sale and had been out of town.
“I wasn’t here like I normally was,” he said, adding that the customer “never asked me for the money back.”
Eventually, “we issued a full refund.”
Schultz, the sole owner of the company, did not take a roofing test with the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department to be his business’ qualified roofer, Son Scapes had no license through MABCD and the company was not registered as a roofer with the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, court documents filed in the case allege. Son Scapes also was not organized or incorporated under Kansas law and “its current status is forfeited,” the documents say.
The allegations arose after a Sedgwick County woman who is classified as a protected consumer under state law complained to the district attorney’s office and police that roofing work she’d partially paid Schultz for was never done. Schultz gave her a proposal on July 24, 2019, to replace the roof and guttering on her home at a cost of $16,177.98, and she signed the contract on July 30, 2019. At that time, the woman paid $5,000. She paid an additional $2,948.44 the next day.
The woman called Schultz “numerous times about a start date” for the work but Schultz “kept telling her he will get to it,” the court documents say.
She filed a formal complaint with the Consumer Protection Division of the DA’s Office on May 29.
On June 17, she filed a police report with the Wichita Police Department.
An investigation into her complaint showed Schultz had no license and “did not have the ability to obtain the proper permit for the work” and that he had failed to provide her with a notice of her right to cancel the contract within three days, both violations of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.
Schultz refunded the woman’s money in July after the DA’s Office contacted him about her complaint. The consent judgment is the second he’s entered into with the DA’s Office in recent years.
In 2017, he agreed to stop “engaging in unconscionable and deceptive acts or practices in connection with a consumer transaction” and “agreed that he will not operate without all necessary and proper licensures,” according to court records.
Schultz agreed to pay $20,000 in fines in connection with the current case. That includes $18,000 in civil penalties; $1,803 in investigative fees and expenses; and $197 in court costs.
If he avoids bad business practices during an 18-month probationary period and pays toward the fines as promised, he can ask the court to reduce the amount he owes by $10,000.
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 2:23 PM.
