Help the Polimeni Family Rebuild Their Home

We are the Polimeni family. We live in the village of Baldwinsville. In September, we hired a contractor, Dakota Smith, to build a bedroom with a basement underneath. We broke ground in late September. There were many delays to the project starting and even after it had started. The contractor continued to make changes to the original plans although he had never began any work. Which ended up costing us a little more each time. In the end, we had paid him about $60,000.

We received about $15,000 of work to the property, by sub-contractors hired by our contractor. However, after the hole was dug for the basement, work stalled because our contractor had not paid the sub-contractors to finish the job. There was also a stop work order placed on our property. He never filed the proper paper work with the village including architectural drawings which he assured us were paid for and submitted. These delays caused the hole to start collapsing along with our kitchen and living room foundation. Which is now being held up by a car jack.

After researching, we found out that the contractor gave us a fake name. He worked under a fake LLC and had no insurance. Looking into his past, we found that he was wanted for an open bench warrant for grand larceny (taking money for projects and not completing them).

Knowing something was not right, we began to ask for our money back. He claimed that he couldn't just give us the money back because he had purchased all the materials for the job but refused to provide receipts for those materials.

On November 5th, he was arrested and is now in jail. We are out our $46,000

My family and I are left with a huge hole, a broken foundation, a torn down fence that has been broken beyond repair, and a $41,000 bill from the concrete contractor we had to hire to fix the existing foundation and finish the new foundation. Not to mention the deck to our pool is being held up by cinder blocks so that it also does not fall into the hole. This all does not include what it will cost us to even build the bedroom we had wanted and the property that he destroyed.

All of our money was tied up in this project and we are now pleading for help. He has taken nearly $50,000 from us. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

The Polimeni Family