Delafield contractor charged with fraud over Mequon home build
Lawsuit has grown more complicated since 2015
A Delafield contractor embroiled in a dispute with a Mequon couple over their luxury home has been charged with fraud by a special prosecutor the couple persuaded a judge to appoint after the Ozaukee County district attorney declined to issue charges.
Timothy Rigsby, 48, faces charges in Ozaukee County of fraud on a financial institution and theft by contractor, both in amounts greater than $10,000. No date has been set for an initial court appearance.
The charges stem from his work designing and building the home of James and Michelle Friedman starting in 2013, with his firm The Rigsby Group.
According to the criminal complaint, Rigsby made draws on money the Friedmans had deposited for the project to pay for labor and materials but withheld some of that money from its proper recipients.
In fact, the complaint states, Rigsby underpaid his subcontractors from the Friedmans’ funds and misrepresented the payments to them and a bank “to induce future payments.”
For example, according to the complaint, a lumber company invoiced Rigsby for $47,317.60, and Rigsby got that full amount from the funds held in trust but shorted the lumber company more than $2,500.
The practice was typical until the Friedmans fired the Rigsby Group in February 2015, the complaint says.
“The Rigsby Group was poorly capitalized from the time it took on this Project and used the funds wrongfully received from the Bank and the Owners to fund and subsidize other projects,” the complaint states.
The complaint is signed by Mequon Police Detective Cory Polishinski and was filed by David Frank of Wauwatosa, who was appointed special prosecutor by Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph Voiland in 2017 after the judge authorized a criminal complaint against Rigsby.
The Friedmans had directly petitioned the circuit court, under a littleused state law meant to provide a check on a prosecutor’s discretion, after Ozaukee County DA Adam Gerol declined to upgrade a 2015 charge against Rigsby and dismissed it entirely.
Gerol consulted with the state Department of Justice before making his decision.
In a letter to the Friedmans, Gerol explained that their modified standard contract with Rigsby introduced some gray area to the contractor’s responsibility for escrow funds and that Gerol did not want his office to be seen as giving an advantage to a party in a civil suit.
The Friedmans sued Rigsby in 2015. The case has morphed into a quagmire of extensive discovery battles, a special master, intervenors and counterclaims that has bounced among several judges in three counties.
It remains pending before a Waukesha County judge.
Rigsby blames the Friedmans for breaching their contract for the house, saying they were trying to build a $2 million home on a $1 million budget.