Without naming names, if you missed the original deleted post, I think it is safe to provide details of the situation.
Worked for a bloke about 3 years ago, managing a site somewhere in the capitol city.
He employed several people and subcontracted out to plumbers, roofers etc, who were used on several of the sites he was contracted to do across the aforementioned city.
Since these should have been lucrative, we were (reasonably) ok to wait for payment (with a promise of a bonus) since money released by the quantity surveyor was largely put back into the jobs for materials and subcontractors who wanted money up front, on the repeated assurance that the books looked healthy and that we would get all payments owed as soon as possible. So we carried on, sometimes putting a few quid in to source materials, and forwarding his wife timesheets and receipts. It was tight at the time, but managable with the dribs and drabs that came to us. In for a penny, in for a pound was the stage we got to.
The end came when he declared himself bankcrupt, owing me about 5K, one plumber £27+K for materials (which he had to find to pay his suppliers on account) and labour, an electrician £3K, a roofer £7K and a couple of (good, loyal and very hardworking) Polish carpenters about £7K.
He hadn't been skimming, but had clearly underpriced the jobs horrendously and had some previous debts which we were unaware of. Not once did he apologise to any of us, and had repeatedly lied over a period of months. When I searched the insolvency service to check the validity of this latest claim, I found that it was true. What I also found was that he was still under a long-standing bankcruptcy order from a few years previous to this, which would explain why he was a cash-only trader with no credit cards nor trade accounts. I am also aware that he owed his parents-in-law a couple of thousand and a supplier a few more. I am also aware that he had taken a few thousand cash from customers and left them high and dry with incomplete work.
We were all, in hindsight, foolish, to be sure, but sometimes you just take people at face value and the size and number of contracts made us feel secure with the potential outcome.
Personally I feel that he should be "outed" as a rogue trader to protect other tradesmen and customers from having dealings with him and any new business he may have set up, but my attempts to do so on here have been curtailed by Admin and the Mods, due to reasons you can read in an associated thread.
I accept the potentially "unsubstantiated" argument by Admin and the Mods, but feel that since his bankcruptcy order is still available on a free and public domain, then a link to this is as valid as a link to a newspaper, radio, youtube or other freely available media.
But I doubt I'll get my way, and sad as it is, I don't blame them.
My real ire with the man (but I'm not looking for revenge), is that the two polish carpenters worked their socks off and, unlike us natives, had nothing to fall back on. The fact that we spent time away from our families (I have 2 young children and both the poles had babies) adds injury to insult.
