‘Nobody can touch him’: KC-area homeowners say contractor owes them money but won’t pay

Kristyn and Nathan Frazee planned and saved for years to build their dream home.

The couple was referred by word of mouth to Eric Eberhart, who owns a construction business out of Cass County called JSE Construction. The Frazees hired Eberhart in November 2022 to do site preparation and concrete work — a decision they would come to deeply regret.

After paying Eberhart thousands of dollars, the Frazees stood on one of the piers they said Eberhart told them he put down to elevate their Warrensburg home to prevent it from flooding. But they realized it easily moved, and another contractor later told the family that had they built their first home on the piers, 50 to 60 mph winds could have knocked it down, putting them and their children in harm’s way.

“He cut corners on absolutely everything he did,” Kristyn Frazee said about the work at their house.

The Frazees aren’t the first to complain about Eberhart. Since 2017, Eberhart has been ordered to pay numerous companies that claimed he owed them money and three customers who alleged he did shoddy or incomplete work, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in judgments, according to court records in Jackson and Cass counties. Others have aired their complaints on social media.

Despite court orders, three of Eberhart’s former clients say he has not paid the full amount awarded. The Frazees and another woman, who said Eberhart “bankrupted” her, have not filed lawsuits.

Reached by phone, Eberhart referred The Star to his attorney, K. Adam Sommer, of Warrensburg.

Sommer called it “unfortunate” that people are willing to say things on social media “about other people without a concern for the truth.”

“It is unfortunate that they have chosen to attempt to go after somebody’s livelihood in this way,” he said, adding that “defamatory statements will be met in kind.”

Eberhart allegedly did such a poor job that the Frazees asked for their money back, which they said amounted to $28,500. Believing they were ripped off, the couple consulted with a lawyer, who said they would “win” on paper if they took Eberhart to court but that the effort could prove pointless.

Eberhart likely wouldn’t pay them, like he hadn’t paid back others, they were told.

The couple took to Facebook, posting pictures of the work Eberhart did to “warn everyone about this con artist.”

“Sadly our family has fallen victim to the biggest scam we never thought would happen,” Kristyn Frazee wrote May 9.

Since then, Kristyn Frazee’s inbox has been “flooded” with people who describe themselves as Eberhart “victims,” she told The Star.

The couple believes Eberhart committed fraud and should be criminally investigated.

When the Frazees’ attorney sent Eberhart a demand letter seeking a refund earlier this year, Sommer responded that Eberhart was declining.

“My client provided work as he was directed by Mr. Frazee,” he wrote.

The Frazees consulted with Blue Springs attorney Jason Rew, who quickly found the contractor’s trail of litigation.

“My concern was you’re going to spend some money, I don’t know how much, on attorney fees and pursuing this guy and it doesn’t appear as though he’s made a habit of paying judgments,” Rew said. “And you may have nothing to show for it.”

Winning a lawsuit doesn’t mean the defendant immediately pays up, Rew said. Oftentimes, plaintiffs must pursue assets like real estate, bank accounts or heavy equipment in order to cash in their judgments.

Contractors routinely face legal disputes, Rew said. But he’s never seen a court record like Eberhart’s.

“What’s uncommon is how he has not even bothered to show up and defend any of these cases,” Rew said. “It’s not uncommon for people to have a lot of judgments against them, especially in construction cases, but it’s pretty uncommon to not show up.”

Court judgments unpaid

In 2018, Lori Payne hired Eberhart to install an epoxy floor in the basement of her Raymore home for $5,000. Most of it looked good, she wrote in a small claims petition she filed months later, but the final quarter of it was “horrible.”

After he later “ruined everything” by putting down too much product, she wrote, he left her with chemicals and a sponge and told her to wipe the floor. She was so upset she could barely speak. Weeks passed as she tried to get Eberhart to redo the floor, she said. He eventually told her she “had an attitude problem” and to “F— off,” according to her complaint in court.

A judge ordered him to pay her $2,604.

But Payne, who now lives in Arizona, said Eberhart did not pay her that full amount. She said she got about $300 from one of his checking accounts, but that he then closed it out.

“Once he finds out someone’s garnishing his accounts, he just closes them all,” said Payne, who was eventually contacted by another woman who claimed he “had done the same thing to her.”

Following a recommendation from a plumber, that woman, Pina Murphy, hired Eberhart to stain the concrete floors in the basement of her Harrisonville home in 2018.

After working for several days, Eberhart told her the work was finished, but warned her to avoid the fumes downstairs. He left the basement tented off from the rest of the house, she said, and she stayed at a hotel.

The next day, she said, she discovered “a mess.”

Instead of a brown finish, the floor was red. Workers left footprints in the stain and cracked her new bathtub, broke a window and damaged her sump pump, she said.

By the time she realized the state of the basement, Murphy had already cut Eberhart a check.

In a text to her, she said, the contractor acknowledged the bad job, saying his company does too much of this kind of work to “leave something looking that way.” He vowed to make it right.

But she says he never refunded the money.

Even filing a lawsuit was challenging: Murphy said the contractor kept dodging servers from the Cass County Sheriff’s Office. She eventually had to hire a private process server to track him down.

Once he was finally served, Eberhart failed to show up in court. A judge in June 2018 ordered JSE Construction to pay $5,000, plus court costs of about $460.

But the judgment was just the beginning. Like other alleged victims, she couldn’t get him to actually pay up. She found out where he banked, but learned he had closed his account. Then, she said, a private process server she hired chained up a piece of his heavy equipment.

Finally, he agreed to pay her $3,000.

“He’s a scammer,” said Murphy, now 52. “He knows what he’s doing.”

‘Deception, fraud, false pretense’

The largest amount Eberhart has been ordered to pay to a former customer came following a claim filed in 2018 in Jackson County Circuit Court.

The year before, Mary Ann Silvius, of Kansas City, paid Eberhart $17,300 to replace a two-car detached garage, according to public court filings. Eberhart told her they were “good with the city” and that everything had been approved, she wrote in the petition. He planned to start work by May 2017.

Three months later, in August of that year, Eberhart acknowledged he was struggling to timely finish the work, according to the court records. He later said he “spoke with the city” and “should have a new permit by the end of business today,” Silvius wrote.

But Silvius’ lawyer alleged that a review of the city’s permits website revealed “no permit was ever issued” for her project.

By early 2018, Silvius’ attorney sent Eberhart a demand letter in an effort to settle the issue; he allegedly did not respond or refund her money.

Her petition contended Eberhart violated the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, calling his operation unlawful and claiming he used “deception, fraud, false pretense, false promise and misrepresentation.” When Eberhart did not show up for court, Judge Mary Weir found him in default and ordered Eberhart to pay Silvius a total of $17,863, which included attorneys’ fees.

Reached by The Star, Silvius said she has not seen any of that money.

As of Wednesday, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office had received one complaint that a consumer paid for JSE’s services but that the “work was shoddy and unfinished,” said spokesperson Madeline Sieren. The AG’s office is “trying to mediate” that case.

The attorney general’s office encouraged anyone who believes they were ripped off to call the consumer protection hotline at 800-392-8222 or to submit a complaint at ago.mo.gov.

Undoing Eberhart’s work

Karen Bunch first hired Eberhart to do concrete work on her new Cass County home. She had planned to hire an Amish crew to build the house, but he beat their bid by $5,000 for the whole house and was available to start immediately.

The framing went well, but nothing else did.

While she was tending to her ill mother in the St. Louis area, she said, Eberhart told her things were progressing. So she kept sending $2,000 checks each week.

Upon her return, she found problem after problem.

First, it was the shoddy toilet: Bunch said the contractor misjudged the plumbing and had to stack the toilet on top of layers and layers of plywood to fit into place.

“He must have thought I was an idiot at that point,” she told The Star. “I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”

The adjacent shower leaked so much she had to have the walls ripped out several times. And as Bunch began asking questions and demanding repair, Eberhart seemed to disappear.

He stopped returning calls and texts, she said.

He left her with a semi-completed home that she describes as unlivable.

The windows are so poorly sealed that dust is a constant struggle.

Shingles have flown off the roof. A radiant heat floor system she paid nearly $10,000 for is inoperable because he didn’t install it correctly, she said.

Piles of concrete litter her yard.

“There’s a lot of Eric in this house that aggravates me on a daily basis,” she said.

He left the upstairs unfinished, she said. Same with the kitchen.

To get through winters, she nests in her bedroom with electric blankets and space heaters. The house gets as cold as 48 degrees, she said.

“This guy totally bankrupted me,” Bunch said. “At this point I’m going to have to sell off part of the acreage just to stay in this shitty house.”

After spending tens of thousands of dollars, Bunch is left with a home that will cost thousands more to fix. Some friends who have inspected it have suggested she demolish the home and start over.

She never pursued civil litigation, expecting he would avoid paying her like he had done with others. Bunch, 66, who uses a wheelchair and a ventilator because of severe multiple sclerosis, said she’d like to pursue an elder abuse case against Eberhart.

“I dont think I’m ever going to see a red cent,” she said. “It will cost about $30,000 to finish the house because they have to undo so much.”

As he allegedly started dodging her calls in 2019, Eberhart told Bunch he had been hired into a full-time construction job, she said. She assumed that meant he had stopped solo work — and stopped ripping off others.

Then, she saw Frazee’s Facebook post.

“It would almost be a comedy of errors if he hadn’t destroyed so many lives,” she said. “Nobody can touch him.”