Lewis M Benson Craigslist Scammer

Our ol’ buddy is up to his old tricks again. His new company name is “True Brite Painting”. How do we know this? Another victim contacted us saying they wished they’d seen our page before doing business with him. In that person’s words:

He was to powerwash, caulk, and paint the entire house.

He did not caulk a thing that I could find as I still have all the same cracks in the siding and trim, he powerwashed about 1/8 of the front of the house and that was it. I guess I should feel extra lucky that he did finish painting the base color of my house. I have found lots of trim that he didn’t paint, but it was the same color so I didn’t notice until I paid him. Lots of overspray (door sills, etc). Did not paint behind the downspouts either.

Now he hangs up on me when I call and won’t take my call if he knows it’s me.

He wanted half the money up front and the other half when finished.

Sounds familiar, huh?

His new numbers:
(816)716-0786
(816)332-9554

New Craigslist ads:

Craigslist ad 1
Craigslist ad 2
Craigslist ad 3
Craigslist ad 4
Craigslist ad 5
Craigslist ad 6
Craigslist ad 7
Craigslist ad 8
Craigslist ad 9

Guess how much work Lewis did after cashing this check? If you guessed zero: Congratulations! You are right. The last picture is of the garage he was supposed to paint.

No, no he’s not, we’re pretty sure that guy’s black. But after Nadia’s hack job in The Pitch we thought we’d learn a little about journalism and found the Fox News “passive aggressive wonderment” technique to appear pretty effective.

Why? Well, we decided to create a revenue stream to benefit those that lost money to Lewis’s scams. For that we needed more traffic, and the Waldo Rapist is hot as fish grease right now. So, without further ado, we’d like to introduce the Hipster Internet Vigilantee Tee-shirt!

That small text reads “I can haz money back now?” in trendy lolspeak!

It comes in S, M, L, XL, XXL and hipster slim sizes. $200/ea, free shipping! (It was economically impossible to sell them for less, we are sorry, but they may be a collectors item some day).

What the hell, let’s see some checks!

Take note of the memos.

Check #1 says “Ext Paint”, which references the exterior paint job outlined by Lewis in this proposal

Check #2 says “Porch Repairs”, which references the porch repair job outlined by Lewis in this proposal

He fulfilled the terms of neither contract, yet cashed both checks.

I received this email today via the ‘Contact Me’ widget that makes it ever so easy to send stuff anonymously:

From: Just Curious
Subject: Do you bother to verify complaints sent to you. Or is pulling claims from your ass evidence?

Message Body:
How do we know you arent just making this shit up? For all anyone knows, you are just writing these claims yourself. You seem like a major tool.

While I do have a very active imagination, these accusations are mos def not made up. I’ll refer you to a couple posts which point to real deal stuff:
Here’s some contracts:

Here’s some fun courtroom drama stuff for the kiddies!!

I suppose you’d like a screen shot of my cashed check next? Unfortunately, i’m not going to put that out here. But I would ask you this: Why the hell would a group of people go to such lengths as creating a webpage ‘on a whim’? That just wouldnt make sense. Would it?

Grab bag email #2:

From: U R Adick
Subject: Paint deez nutz

Message Body:
The Pitch has exxxposed you. You post the guys name and personal info, then ask to not have yours divulged. Fail.

You’re right. The Pitch really exposed me for being someone who doesnt like a ton of personal information out in the public! BURN!!!

The difference is that we’re not scamming people, so our personal information would only provide you with, well, random addresses and emails. While exposing LEWIS, that helps people avoid making the same mistake we made – hiring a dishonest person to do honest work.

This page was done for less than $25 and in less than 2 hours. If you’ve got such a vested interest in Mr. Benson’s reputation, start your own webpage. If you email me, i’ll gladly point you in the right direction. It’s so easy even a crooked general contractor could do it.

Here are some scans of the very detailed contracts provided by Lewis M Benson.  I’m sure it would have been a significantly easier decision if he’d written ‘I’ll take your money and then disappear, just like I did to several other people’ instead of all this complicated contractor-talk.

Take note of the fact that the first image proposes repair of  wood rot. He gave a detailed proposal, accepted payment, and completed exactly none of the work before changing his number and refusing to respond to emails. This doesn’t exactly sync well with what he told The Pitch.

This is an open and shut case of fraud, in any courtroom, anywhere…