KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ella Lane had a roof badly in need of repair. She had hoped that Mark Wilson of TLC Construction was just the man for the job, but she was wrong.

Wilson promised to start putting a new roof on her Ruskin Heights home as soon as she paid him a $2,000 deposit. Most legitimate roofers don’t require a deposit. Unfortunately, Lane didn’t know that and gave Wilson the deposit that day. She never saw Wilson again.

Every time Lane called Wilson, he had a new excuse as to why he had not started roofing her home.
“He’d been in an accident,” Lane said she was told. “He’d been in the hospital. There was a homicide over where he lived.”

Then Wilson stopped answering her calls. That’s when Lane called FOX4 Problem Solvers, hoping we could help her get her money back.

We called Wilson to hear his side.

“I was in the hospital with a truck wreck,” Wilson said.

Problem Solvers told Wilson that if he was too sick or injured to do the job, he needed to give Lane her $2,000 back. Wilson then claimed he had already repaid Lane $1,800.

Lane denied ever receiving a dime, but Wilson assured us he could provide proof. He would either email us or drop off the documents.

We waited several weeks, but Wilson never sent us anything and stopped answering our phone calls.

And we’re not the only ones who he ghosted.

“He ran away with my money,” said Shawntee Grimm, a hard-working single mom who lives in the northland with her children.

Grimm said she paid Wilson a $400 deposit to replace the electrical box and wires on the outside of her home. He promised to do the job that very day.

“He told me he was well known with the city and the city council and he could get the permit pulled the same day,” Grimm said.

After receiving the deposit, Grimm said she never saw Wilson again. She had to pay another company to do the job. That’s probably a good thing because FOX4 Problem Solvers could find no master electrician’s license on file for Wilson with the city of Kansas City. A license is required to pull a permit for major electrical work.

“It’s just really frustrating,” Grimm said of Wilson. “I have two kids. Like, why would you do this? You continually lie.”

Grimm tried suing Wilson in small claims court, but the sheriff could never find him to serve him. Both Grimm and Lane have also filed complaints with the Missouri Attorney General’s office, which is investigating.

Unfortunately, this is a problem FOX4 Problem Solvers can’t solve, but what we can do is warn others and provide Mark Wilson and TLC Construction with a permanent spot in the FOX4 Problem Solvers Hall of Shame.