Kansas City contractor facing felony charges in Missouri for consumer fraud cases
After years of consumer complaints, the former owner of a Lee’s Summit home remodeling business is facing criminal charges in Missouri.
The Missouri Attorney General’s office and the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office charged Michael Ross with five felony counts of unlawful merchandising and three felony counts of financial exploitation of the elderly. Ross owned Building Pro LLC, a home remodeling company that racked up multiple complaints from homeowners on both sides of the state line.
In 2018, The Star reported on a series of those complaints. One unhappy homeowner organized a list of 18 Building Pro customers who collectively claimed to have paid more than $360,000 for unstarted or unfinished home remodeling projects.
At the time, the Missouri attorney general’s office said it was investigating 15 complaints against Building Pro.
Ross ran the company largely as a family affair, working closely with his sister-in-law Karin Ross. She had married Mike’s brother and she helped pitch projects to homeowners, set up remodeling jobs and collected money. Customers said she did the design work on their projects and collected separate payments of commissions.
The charges filed this month center on eight Missourians. In charging documents, prosecutors allege Ross collected tens of thousands of dollars from homeowners in 2017 without ever completing remodeling services, delivering all the materials or issuing refunds.
The Star was unable to reach Ross, whose current address is listed in Michigan on charging documents.
Jennifer Turner wrote a check to the company to remodel the kitchen in her Lee’s Summit home. But the firm never even began demolition. She said she has received no financial restitution and doesn’t expect to. But she was encouraged by the action of Missouri’s top law enforcement official.
“I’m very excited and hopeful that they will bring him to some justice. He harmed a lot of very nice people that trusted him,” she said. “I feel like it’s a good thing that they were able to at least file some charges. Everybody deserves due process but criminal charges being filed by the attorney general’s office is a very big statement.”
Turner said Karin Ross completed the design plans and sold the remodel work for her kitchen project. While her role as a sales agent is listed multiple times in the charging documents, Karin Ross so far faces no charges. She now owns the Lee’s Summit remodeling company Karin Ross Designs.
Turner said she would not do business with that company and was disappointed that Karin Ross has not been charged.
“I am disappointed but I don’t know that our attorney general is finished,” she said. “Who knows.”
Turner encouraged consumers to advocate for themselves. She said those who say they were scammed by Building Pro began meeting and lobbying for action.
“As a group, consumers are stronger than individuals,” she said. “In this case, we were able to band together and work together.”
It’s unclear whether more charges might be filed in the case.
“We’re not going to comment on the potential for more charges or the potential of charges filed on Karin Ross, but if there are other consumers who feel they’ve been defrauded by Ross, we would urge them to file a complaint with our office,” said Chris Nuelle, spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
When reached by a reporter with The Star on Friday, Karin Ross identified herself but then handed the phone to another individual at her business. That man would not share his name or hand the phone back to Ross, but said she was only an employee in the Building Pro company that has been the subject of consumer complaints.
In Kansas, the Johnson County district attorney previously investigated multiple consumer complaints against Building Pro and prosecutors determined that the company had violated the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.
In a consent decree signed off by a district court judge, Michael Ross agreed to cease working as a supplier in residential remodeling, construction, design or repair services in Johnson County. In its agreement with prosecutors, Building Pro said it had paid $55,000 in refunds to consumers. The consent decree said the company had stopped operation in early 2018.
While the Kansas Attorney General’s office frequently investigates consumer complaints, Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe said his office frequently investigates those cases that happen within the state’s most populous county.
“We have the resources,” he said.
Howe said the state line can complicate enforcement of consumer protection laws. While officials in Kansas and Missouri can cooperate to some extent, they are bound by their state jurisdictions.
“It’s a difficult situation in the Kansas City metro area, where the state line runs right down the middle,” he said. “So a lot of these individuals who commit consumer fraud do bounce back and forth between the two states. It’s not the first time.”
Construction complaints involving home repair contractors are among the most common complaints made to the Missouri Attorney General’s consumer protection division. In 2018, the office received more than 1,200 complaints over contractors that accepted upfront fees and did not provide any of the work, provided “shoddy workmanship” or failed to honor warranties.
Common as the complaints are, spurned customers of Building Pro insisted they took many of the steps experts recommend to vet contractors.
The company in 2016 gained admittance into the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, which typically approves only a small percentage of contractors as members.
In March 2012, Building Pro passed scrutiny to become listed on HomeAdvisors as one of its “trusted professionals.” HomeAdvisors’ website currently says it checks applicants’ contracting licenses and state business records, and looks for civil judgments, criminal records and sex offender listings.
March 2012 also was when Building Pro got its first review on Angie’s List (which merged with HomeAdvisors last year) and the company had averaged a “B” grade from 25 reviews, The Star reported in 2018.
Those credentials figured into homeowners’ decisions of whether to hire Building Pro.
