A contractor who built homes throughout the River Parishes was recently arrested in New York near the Hamptons and charged with misapplication of payments, which totaled more than $90,000, according to the Sag Harbor Village.
And no one may be happier about that arrest than former Des Allemands resident Abby Chabert, who says that the contractor, 38-year-old Ray Leach, still owes her and her husband $5,000.
Chabert said that her ordeal with Leach first began in 2005 when her husband returned from a year-long military deployment in Iraq. The two had purchased a lot in Bayou Gauche and researched contractors before settling on LaPlace-based Ray Leach Construction. Since Leach’s company did not have any complaints listed against it, the two hired Ray Leach Construction and began dealing with project manager David Harper.
On May 29, 2007, the Chaberts paid an initial deposit of $15,000 to start their new home project, which was supposed to consist of a 2,700-square-foot house and a 10×10 shed. The money came from her husband’s military deployment, and in the end, all the Chaberts would receive would be one error-filled copy of their house plan.
Chabert and Harper kept in weekly contact through e-mails and phone calls, but when she requested an itemized statement for the project, she said that those e-mails and phone calls stopped.
“I sent numerous e-mails and I called everyday five to 10 times a day and no one would return my calls,” Chabert said. “My gut feeling was that we were being scammed, so I sent a very firm e-mail to David saying that he had 24 hours to respond to me because I would be contacting the police department.”
Harper then responded with an e-mail telling Chabert to direct any further questions to Leach.
Chabert says she eventually heard from Leach, who told her that Ray Leach Construction would be shutting down its offices because of financial trouble and that they would try to reconcile her account.
According to Chabert, Leach then told her that he didn’t have any records that she had paid him $15,000.
Chabert’s subsequent phone calls went unanswered and she eventually went to the St. John Parish Sheriff’s Office, who refused to file a report because the property was in St. Charles Parish. Chabert says she immediately filed a charge in St. Charles Parish.
“When I picked up a copy, I noticed that the report was written for contractor fraud, which was not true,” Chabert said. “It was theft and I demanded for it to be changed to theft because we paid Ray Leach Construction $15,000 for a service that was never provided.”
Chabert also filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Louisiana Contractors Board and the Attorney General’s Office. After filing both the charge and the complaints, Chabert found out that Leach was leaving to go to New York.
“I continuously left messages on his cell, and in the 30th and final message I said to him ‘Before you leave to get on your flight to New York, I will be waiting for you at the airport with a police officer to have you arrested for theft,’” Chabert said. “Within 15 minutes of that message, he called me back and offered to meet me discreetly at Starbucks by Lakeside to return partial funds the next day.”
Chabert says that she and her husband arrived at Starbucks to meet Leach, and she was shocked at the appearance of the man sitting across the table.
“He looked pathetic and homeless,” she said. “He was unshaven with wrinkled clothes and probably hadn’t had a hair cut in months.”
That’s when Chabert says that the waterworks started.
“He cried at the table and told me ‘I can’t believe that you took it to the extremes you did and I really wish you hadn’t done that,’” Chabert said. “He sat there with us shaking his head and crying and said ‘this is the first time in my life I can’t provide for my family.’”
Chabert says that Leach eventually handed her a check for $10,000, which he claimed came from his mother’s retirement account in Florida.
“I spoke to his mother or someone who pretended to be his mother on the phone when he gave me the generic, wrinkled and half-torn check for $10,000,” Chabert said. “When I brought it to my bank, they were skeptical to cash it because it was a blank check with his mother’s name, address and phone number hand written on it.”
Though Chabert did receive $10,000, she doesn’t think she will ever get back the rest of her money.
“I’m extremely angry and frustrated because no one wanted to help me in the beginning,” she said. “And now that he owes thousands of dollars to hundreds of others, I doubt that we will ever see that money again.”
But at least Chabert can take solace in knowing that Leach was eventually arrested.
“I hope he stays in jail where he belongs,” she said. “Hopefully, he is found guilty and is forced to sell everything he and the Leach family own to pay back all the debt he created.
“He’s a lying, heartless thief.”
Chabert believes that her charge against Leach is still pending in St. Charles Parish, but if it’s not, then she is going to file another one.
“I have no mercy for this man,” she said. “He’s a con artist.”
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