We hired Nathan Keife Mason, Executive Handyman Services in late 2011 for a full scale renovation of a condominum as Nathan bid the renovation with the lowest price, and he was friendly and smooth talker, promises a lot of hopes and even invited us for his apartment for a beer. A big mistake we were conned royally by Nathan for more than $10,000.
He demanded illegal amount of deposit $2000 even before the work began. Not to make the relationship with the contractor, Nathan, awkward from the beginning, we paid. His contractor came in for demolitions to start, and many more yellow/red flags started appearing. His contractor had cut an electrical of the neighbor's bathroom; and we had to pay for the damage. His contractor started building dangerous wood frame for a new glass window for a bathroom, which was so bad that if we pushed the frame, the frame wobbled. They trashed the place and never cleaned up. Because of the amateur work on the frame, the entire wall in a room started wobbles, and we ended up replacing it all with the actual licensed contractor.
Nathan listed his contractor's license on his business card or in his website; and stupidly, we didn't check if it's active or not and took his words face value; and after all the damages Nathan's company caused, we realized that the licesnse was inactive.
He gave us his insurance papers too, but when we called for all the damages, it was expired a long time ago. That's the kind of guy, Nathan is, all facade, no substance, lying straight to our faces.
We tried to give him the chance to make things right; and he took us to a cabinet store; and the store's cabinets were so outdated/out styled, and we thought he just want to cut the cost so that he can pocket more for himself. We ended up hiring an independent cabinet company.
During the renovation; Nathan started demanding he needed more cash to do more; we wrote him the check of $12000+ total. We really tried to work with him and gave him the benefit of the doubt. He really screwed us for our kindness. After he got the money, he stopped coming and stopped taking our phone calls.
About a week later, after the repeated calls, he finially picked up and told us that he blew all the money on his brother's brithday party in chicago during the weekend. It must have been the best birthday parthy he ever had at the expense of our money!
After that, he was on the run...
First we tried to locate him so that we can serve him the small claim court paper, but he was no where to find. I called the landloard of his apartment complex about him, but the land lady told us that he didn't pay the rent for 3 months, so they evicted him. We just couldn't do anything to this man on the run.
A few months later, after we completed our renovation with a licensed, trusted contractor who we are still friends with, we contacted the goverment agency cslb and they started the investigation. About a year and half later, he got picked up in Long Beach at a government sting operation for illegal contracting; and he was finally caught althought by the separate occation. The DA added the charge from our case to Nathan, and he made a deal with the government to pay back every cents from us in order to avoid the jail time, payable $200 dollar per month for 5/6 years until all are paid off. When we got a call from a DA office for the deal, we were ecstatic but the joy didn't last for long.
Nathan paid us the initial $200, and simply disappeared. We never heard from him or about him from the government either. We hope that the government is still pursuing this criminal who conned a lot of money, endanger our propery and lives by his shoddy work, gave us a tremedous trouble.
We are so surprised that Nathan is still blazenly running the company, exective handyman services, now not just in Los Angeles, but in Texas, Arkansas, Florida, etc... wherever he can keep finding the victims for his own needs. We want to give everyone's a headsup, so that none, we mean, no one will fall into a victim by him and his company ever again.