MANA

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• By Nahid L.

  February 22, 2024

  Electrical Work on new ADU

  $47,500

  Mana (Anthony Morelli), a licensed contractor, was hired by my general contractor (Chaparros Foundation and Framing, Eli Ocampo Martinez) to do the electrical scope on our ADU. Early on, we realized that Anthony and Eli are good friends and they’ve worked together for 7-8 years on multiple projects. We started having issues with Eli, our GC. His quality of work went down, he was asking for payments ahead of schedule. He used excuses like family emergency to get payments before completing a certain phase of the project. When I brought up the issue with Anthony and his wife, they assured me that Eli is a good person and they have known him for a very long time and that he is just a bit stressed out. On the last day before terminating Eli and his crew, Eli lied about the roof being completed and he demanded the final 25% payment for the roof. When I sent the drone up to check the status of the roof, I noticed that the roof was not complete at all and that weekend, we were having a rain storm that flooded the entire ADU. At that point, we had overpaid Eli over 30K based on the completed scope. We terminated Eli, our GC and we asked if Anthony and Dailey would be available to act as the general contractor on the project and finish the work and we mentioned how we had issues with Eli and we had over-paid him and he refused to finish the roof before the rain storm demanding more money. Throughout this whole time, Anthony sympathized with our situation and never once mentioned anything about not getting paid by Eli. After waiting for 2 weeks for Anthony's proposal to finish the ADU, on the day he was going to come, sign the contract and start work, he sent an invoice for over $6,000 for the work completed before (during the time Eli was GC) and he claimed that there is only $1,000 worth of electrical work left to be completed. We had already paid Eli over 21,000 plus spent over $8,000 on material purchased by Anthony for the electrical phase alone. Anthony claimed that he never got paid by Eli, (his good friend with whom they had worked together for 8 years. Besides, Anthony had mentioned that he was hiring Eli to do the foundation and framing for a new project he had secured), and we could not understand how he could not demand payment from Eli, his buddy who he has a contract with and an ongoing working relationship. Anthony started threatening us to file a lien if we did not make the payment.
  In that week, during the scheduled inspection, the inspector noticed some code violations on the electrical issues. I asked Anthony to come and resolve the issues before we release the payment and he refused to do so. In his invoice, Anthony had also indicated only $1200 worth of material purchased by the client. When I shared the receipts of all the purchases they had made for electrical items using our credit card, totaling over $8,000, he refused to reflect that amount in his invoice. Even though we had paid Eli already, we were willing to make the payment to Anthony if he had adjusted his invoice to show the correct amounts and shown an eagerness to resolve code violations identified by the inspector.

  We asked a local, reputable electrical firm for an estimate for fixing the code violation issues and finishing the remaining electrical scope and energizing the panel and that estimate was $16,650 while Anthony claimed the work was almost complete and he needed only $1,000 more to finish it.

  I shared the estimate with Anthony and I asked him to finish the work and address code violation issues in order to get paid. He refused to do so yet he kept threatening to file a lien if we didn't pay the incorrect invoice he had sent us. He refused to share a copy of his contract with Eli yet he expected me to pay his invoice. The law allows licensed contractors to place a lien on your property even if they were not hired directly by you and if they were hired by your GC…That sure was a lesson learned for us. Now we know how licensed and unlicensed contractors can team up and force you to pay twice for a service. Eli, (Chaparro Foundation & Framing) the unlicensed contractor gets the job and leaves with the money. Then his buddy, Anthony (Mana), the licensed contractor claims he didn’t get paid, threatens to file a lien, and gets paid again to screw the homeowner even further.

  I have filed a complaint with CSLB and involved my attorney to stop the lien process. It is so unfortunate to see devoted, church-going Christians (Anthony and Dailey) who have no morality and choose to go after an innocent homeowner who have already experienced a 50K loss because of an incompetent and dishonest contractor, but they wouldn't go after their buddy who they were contracted with to collect payment. That's what makes you doubt if the story is even true or if this is the way they do business all the time.

  Long story short, this team’s incompetency and dishonesty cost us significant time and money. Avoid them at all costs.

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