Before I read this report by someone else being scammed by John French, I hired John French for roof work on my rental house in Cincinnati as I live in Florida. I used him because he gave me the best price. He wanted to start the work immediately and asked that I wire money to him. I told him that I was not in a huge rush but he told me that he wanted to start ASAP as he had an opening now and as soon as I got the contract signed and half of the deposit to him, he would begin the work. He told me that it would be completed in 5 days. I also asked for a reference. He gave me two. One was a positive reference and the other one never called me back. Since I did not want to wire him money, he asked me to over night it and that he would pay for the over night fee so I did over night him a check for over $1000.By accident, I put the wrong date on the check and on the contract. I dated both for July to begin the work as well as on the check. When he received my ck. He told me that he could not cash the ck since I had the wrong date on it. I told him that I would send him another one. Again he asked that I wire him money because he already had his workmen and a dumpster coming to my house the following day and had reserved the next 5 days to work on my roof. My Dad was in Cincinnati so I asked him to write him a check for the deposit and so he did and he gave it to Mr. French so he could use the money for materials, etc as he said he needed to begin the work that day. He then told my Dad that there was 60% chance of rain and that he may not be able to begin the work. So after I heard that, i called him up and he told me that he was going to start that day and that he was just waiting for the dumpster and his workmen to show up. I then told him, that if he was not going to start that day, then to cancel the contract as I made a great effort to get the money to him. He promised to start the work that day.
Then Monday comes and my tenant said that he had not been by so I called him and he said that he was not able to get the dumpster on Sat. And that he was going to begin that day which was now Monday. My fatehr drove by at the end of the day and he had not started the work. I then googled his name and saw the report that Ron Foster had posted and then did a back round search on him that did not look good. At that point I tried to stop payment on my check but it was too late. I told him that i was going to stop the payment and he made all kinds of threats as to what he would do if I stopped the payment. I contacted the Cin. Police and they made calls to him and told him that he was going to return my check after 10 days to make sure it cleared his bank even though it had cleaner my back in 3 days. Over 10 days went by and the police and myself have called him and he is not returning my calls. I am currently in the process of filing a civil suite against him. It would be great to get the money back but most importantly I am doing this so he gets arrested and cannot continue to get by with this and we will do whatever it takes and as many trips to Cincinnati to apprehend this man.
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