CHARLOTTE, NC — A contractor accused of taking money for work he didn't do served time behind bars. Now, he's out and customers say he's doing it again.
Sammy Mullis faces criminal charges again - this time in Gaston County. One charge is for failure to work after being paid, a misdemeanor. The second is for obtaining property by false pretense, a felony.
ACTION 9 article: Contractor faces charges for not completing jobs
In the first case, the customer says she gave Mullis $800 up front to remodel a bathroom, but that he never came back to the house. In the second case, the customer says he gave Mullis more than $21,000 and that Mullis took it "knowing" he was "not intending to finish" the job.
Other customers, like David Smith, didn't file police reports. They complained to Action 9 instead. Smith owns apartments in Uptown Charlotte's Fourth Ward. He said he hired Mullis to redo the siding, that he gave Mullis $4,000 to get started, and that Mullis did about $2,000 worth of work, but stopped. Smith told Action 9 Mullis kept giving him excuses. So, Smith cut his losses and cut ties with Mullis. "I hate that I was taken advantage [of], and it was so blatantly clear that he was trying to pull a fast one on me," Smith said.
And these are just the latest complaints against Mullis.
In 2014, Jennifer Helfgott said she gave Mullis $50,000 to work on properties she flipped, but that he hadn't finished the job. "This guy left places gutted. He left toilets sitting in the middle of the room," she said.
Around the same time, Carol Taylor told Action 9 she gave Mullis $480 for a countertop job she said he hadn't completed. "We all realize that we're probably not going to get our money back, but we want him out of business," she said.
A few weeks later, Mullis went to jail in Tennessee, serving eight months behind bars for theft of property in that state. He was paroled in 2015 and finished his sentence in 2016.
Action 9 tried to get in touch with Mullis multiple ways. He had not responded by Monday afternoon. He's due in court in February.
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