London contractor pleads guilty to defrauding homeowners out of thousands in unfinished renos

Isha Bhargava · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 15, 2025 7:34 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

A contractor accused of taking thousands of dollars successful deposits from clients and not completing their renovations, pleaded guilty to 2 counts of fraud successful a London, Ont., courtroom connected Tuesday. 

Andrew Fraser, 33, pleaded blameworthy to 1 number of fraud exceeding $5,000 and different number under $5,000 for 2 abstracted incidents which took spot betwixt February and August 2022. 

His lawyer, Nick Cake, told the justice oversee proceedings that more blameworthy pleas are expected to beryllium entered betwixt present and his pre-sentencing day successful June.

CBC News first reported connected the allegations in September 2022 when half-a-dozen homeowners who hired Fraser done his institution AJF Construction, filed a constabulary study saying they were retired a full of astir $70,000 aft waiting months for enactment that ne'er got done. 

Some families said they were stuck with further damage to their homes owed to jobs that Fraser started but near unfinished.

Fraser took a 50 per cent deposit for enactment that included installing caller doors, windows oregon redoing their roof, among different things, but soon after, calls and messages to Fraser would spell unanswered, the families said.  

In September 2023, Fraser told CBC News that he intended to implicit enactment for clients but a challenging labour marketplace and shortage of materials coming retired of the COVID-19 pandemic made it intolerable for him to decorativeness the renovation jobs. 

At the time, helium said his institution was in the process of declaring bankruptcy, adding that helium had paid back $30,000 to astir a half-dozen clients.

'I'm conscionable relieved' says victim

Londoner Jeremy McCall is 1 of the clients Fraser pleaded blameworthy to defrauding connected Tuesday.

McCall said helium hired Fraser successful January 2022 to regenerate the beforehand doors of his location and the windows surrounding it, and paid him $4,000 arsenic a 50 per cent deposit.

"He past spent the adjacent six months avoiding myself and my wife. Anytime we were capable to get a clasp of him, helium came up with a communicative arsenic to wherefore helium hadn't been back, and past helium would conscionable halt replying," said McCall.

"After six months of not getting anywhere, I started realizing thing was fishy, and I reached retired to different folks and heard immoderate of their stories, and realized we had been defrauded."

McCall said Fraser returned portion of his deposit, but helium is inactive owed astir $1,650. Still, McCall said he's grateful complaints were thoroughly investigated. 

"We unrecorded successful times wherever it's truthful casual to consciousness similar you don't matter, and that radical who take to behaviour amerciable enactment are going to get distant with it due to the fact that resources are truthful slim. Police are truthful overrun with each the myriad of issues that they person to woody with," helium said. "I'm conscionable relieved that my consciousness of fairness and justness has been restored."

Fraser is backmost successful court on June 24.