Robert Daniel (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
An unlicensed contractor accused of taking thousands of dollars from customers and either doing no work or slipshod work appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court last Monday and pled guilty to the charges against him.
Forty-nine-year-old Robert Shane Daniel of Mountain Home, who did business as Ozark Home Pro, was sentenced to 10-years-probation. A hearing will be held April 7 to determine the amount of restitution to be charged.
Daniel’s charges included theft of property, obtaining a signature by deception, and being a felon in possession of firearms.
In most recent case filed against him; a woman came to the Lakeview Police Department to report she had signed a contract with Daniel in mid-December 2022 to do repairs to a building.
When she inspected the project in January 2023, she found the workmanship to be substandard. When she contacted Daniel about the problems, he said he would come and fix anything that she was dissatisfied with.
According to the police report, Daniel did not show up as promised to do the repairs. When the victim called Daniel again, he said he would not be coming out because of bad weather.
The victim said he made no mention of returning any of her money and that Daniel owes her slightly more than $4,200 for uncompleted work.
The Lakeview building and code enforcement officer told the victim that no permit had ever been “pulled to do the work.”
The victim hired another contractor to finish the work on her property and filed a theft of services report with the police.
OTHER CASES SIMILAR
A number of complaints were made to the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office and the Mountain Home Police Department by customers who allege they were ripped off by Daniel.
The complaints filed with the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office allege that customers lost more than $102,000. One customer was reported to have been talked into investing $25,000 in Daniel’s company.
In most cases, Daniels would take money up front for materials and labor. Allegedly, the material was never delivered and the work never done.
Investigators report that Daniels gave the same false excuses to customers when they contacted him about their projects.
In investigating complaints against Daniel and his company, it was discovered he had never been a licensed contractor in Arkansas.
According to probable cause affidavits filed in the cases, Daniel was found to be on active felony probation from the state of Georgia and being supervised by the Mountain Home probation and parole office under the Interstate Compact.
In 2022, Daniel was charged in Stone County with theft for taking slightly more than $19,000 from an 87-year-old woman for three projects on her property.
Construction was never started. The criminal case was dropped after Daniel repaid the victim in full in March 2023.
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