NewsDenver7 | Investigates

Actions

Home contractor who owes Coloradans for work not completed is sued by Indiana Attorney General

Mark Sellers could be forced to stop working
Posted at 3:38 PM, Jul 20, 2018
and last updated 2018-07-20 20:33:07-04

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- A former home contractor who owes Coloradans money for work he didn’t complete, has been sued by the Indiana Attorney General for allegedly ripping off people there.

Seven metro-Denver customers complained Mark Sellers didn’t complete work they paid him to do. In 2011, Boulder County prosecutors got a court injunction against Sellers.

The injunction forced him to shut down his business in Colorado.

But he showed up in Indiana years later, and Denver7 reported in May on claims he skipped out on customers there.

Sellers owes close to $118,000 in judgments in Indiana dating back to 2014 for work Indiana customers say was also either never completed or done poorly. 

The Indiana Attorney General filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Sellers and his Indiana business, Olive Leaf Construction.

“Mark Sellers repeatedly contracted to perform home improvement work and failed to finish the projects as contracted,” the attorney general’s lawsuit says.

It lists five victims.

The Attorney General’s office is asked a judge to issue a permanent injunction preventing Sellers from owning operating a home improvement business in Indiana.

The Indiana Attorney General’s office also wants sellers to pay $16,120 in restitution.

Sellers violated Indiana’s Home Improvement Contracts Act, didn’t provide approximate starting and completion dates of projects and violated the Deceptive Consumer Sales Act, the lawsuit claims.

Denver7’s Indianapolis sister station, WRTV, found Sellers still advertising his business earlier this year in a Craigslist ad.

WRTV reporter Kara Kenney confronted Sellers.

At the time he said he was working to pay the judgment against him in Colorado and Indiana.

One of those customers still owed money in Colorado is Michael Scafani. He's a former bagel shop owner turned real estate investor who hired Sellers to help renovate a home near Boulder.

"He took you in just enough to get the cash. And then you'd start having other problems, like him not showing up. 'Oh, I was on another job,'” Boulder-area customer Micahel Scafani told Contact7. “I can understand someone making a mistake and someone -- a young guy -- underestimating what something is going to entail, but what I don't appreciate is someone lying to me.”

Scafani is one of several victims named in Colorado court documents.

He says Sellers has not paid him.

WRTV’s Kara Kenney contributed to this report.