Spotting a scam

Halton police investigate roughly 100 cases of fraud a month. In Hamilton, those numbers are slightly higher. In some cases the victims are seniors, but sometimes it’s just regular people being duped out of cash.

Arjun Rattan was looking for a contractor to do a bedroom renovation and add a deck to his Burlington home in July. He found a company called The Demo Guys on-line and the contractor replied quickly with a quote.

“He wanted me to put down a 20% deposit, which I did then he asked for more money for the bin rental and to buy more supplies.”

In total, Rattan says he email transferred over $3400 to the contractor but he never showed up to start the job. A simple Google search of The Demo Guys shows similar stories.

Halton police say they will be looking into Rattan’s case, but in the meantime the contractor is already facing 5 charges of fraud under $5000 in Hamilton.

We called the contractor to get his side of the story and he agreed to meet with us, but when we showed up he wasn’t there.

The contractor told us today he has agreed to pay Rattan back the money this Friday but he claims he only owes $2200 while Rattan says that number is $3400.