If you are considering hiring Victor, please read this carefully--this decision cost us over…read more$70,000 and nearly broke us emotionally.
We hired Victor in March of 2024. We have been so busy cleaning up the mess he left behind that we haven't had the energy to leave reviews, but we feel it's necessary so he doesn't keep getting away with this. We later heard from several people he had either worked with or worked for that this is a pattern for him--constantly creating problems and owing people money as a result.
Victor signed a very detailed contract with us. We agreed to pay 50% of each room or project upfront, and the remaining balance once that room was completed. No room was ever fully finished, yet he continued asking for more money. When we pointed out that the work wasn't done, he would laugh and say, "It's going to get done." Instead, the quality of work kept getting worse and his workers started barely showing up. We found beer cans inside our home, cigarette butts dumped throughout our yard, and construction debris--nails, screws, glass, tile, paint, drywall--everywhere. It became impossible to even let our dog use the grass. Our yard was completely destroyed from all the trash being dumped, and despite repeatedly asking Victor to clean it up (which was included in our contract), nothing changed.
We also began noticing that none of the projects we were paying for were actually being completed. Victor failed to take care of our belongings, and many items and pieces of furniture were damaged and had to be thrown away. Over time, we realized he wasn't supervising the work at all.
We ended up paying Victor over $70,000. During the same week we made the final payment, one of the workers knocked on our door. He was visibly upset, angry, and in tears. He asked if it was true that we were refusing to pay for the work being done. I assured him that was not true and offered to show him our contract and proof of every payment we had made to Victor. He told us that Victor had struggled to pay him throughout the three months he worked on our house and that he hadn't been paid at all for the last three weeks. Suddenly, everything made sense--why the work quality declined and why no one was showing up.
We then learned that Victor didn't actually have employees. He was asking for favors from people he had worked with in the past, including jobs he had been fired from, and even poaching workers from other job sites. This man told us Victor convinced him to leave his job with promises of making good money. I asked why no one had spoken to us sooner. I am bilingual, and anytime I tried to talk to the workers, they avoided us. He explained that Victor had specifically instructed them not to speak to us.
When we confronted Victor, he couldn't explain what he had done with the over $70,000 we paid him in just three months. We had also paid for most of the materials ourselves, and he never had more than two or three people at the house--usually only one or two. He then asked us to "loan" him money so he could pay the workers he owed. He signed a new contract agreeing to repay us, including the money we were now paying directly to one worker on a daily basis just to try to finish some of the unfinished projects.
Victor eventually stopped responding altogether. We formally notified him that he was in breach of contract. Nearly two years later, he has never reached out, though we can see that he has created a new website that only links to positive reviews. We were forced to stop all work on the house because it became clear Victor had no intention of honoring his contract. This doesn't even include all the work that was improperly installed or done incorrectly and had to be completely redone. My husband and I did our best to finish what we could ourselves just so we could move back in. The house had become unlivable--the debris, dust, and lack of cleanup made it impossible to breathe.
There aren't enough characters here to explain everything that happened with Victor as the middleman--because that's all he is. He collects money on behalf of the people actually doing the work. He calls himself a contractor, but he isn't even licensed.
QUE DIOS TE PERDONE, VICTOR. You have caused us an unbelievable amount of pain, stress, and frustration.
