ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis-area contractor is wanted by authorities in a number of counties and is now the subject of a Missouri Attorney General’s Office investigation.
One of his alleged victims says she’s glad to see some progress.
Val Droege wanted the perfect upgrades for her Villa Ridge home and said she was left with a mess.
“Yeah, it took me a month to get this lovely hole here, and I can somewhat drive on it,” she said.
With two active kids and a husband who’s blind, she decided to look for a contractor to do some work on her home.
“We’re going to make our master bedroom right down here, and we wanted to get an egress window in it,” she said, giving 5 On Your Side a tour.
She thought she found a reputable contractor in Mike Shaw, who sold her a familiar story: that he was the former Ferguson Police Chief during the protests following Michael Brown's death in 2014.
Droege was suspicious.
“Maybe he was just trying to impress,” she said. “Because of course, I Googled it. I didn’t see anything about him doing that.”
She still did business with him, paying him $6,000 to start the project. It was the last time she saw him.
“I mean, it’s just so embarrassing, and I fell for it,” she said.
After the I-Team’s reports about similar complaints involving Shaw in late 2021, the Missouri Attorney General charged him with eight counts, including financial exploitation of an elderly person and deceptive business practice.
According to the state’s probable cause statement, Shaw would bill customers, then never finish the work. Prosecutors in multiple counties say out of those cases, he took $5,000 from one homeowner, $4,800 from another, and nearly $8,000 from someone else. In all, the AG believes Shaw took more than $25,000 from multiple customers.
In a statement to the 5 On Your Side, a spokesman for Attorney General Eric Schmidt wrote:
“Our Consumer Protection Section works diligently every single day to root out, investigate, and potentially prosecute bad actors who seek to take advantage of Missourians, and this case is a prime example. Our case against Mike Shaw is ongoing, and we urge anyone else who feels they’ve been defrauded or scammed by Mike Shaw to reach out to our office and file a complaint - we will fight on your behalf.
"As far as the bond question goes: The Attorney General’s Office routinely seeks to use and does use paid bond money to provide restitution for affected consumers. In this case, Shaw has not posted bond, but we will seek to use any bond payments as restitution.”
If Shaw is arrested and if he posts bond on state charges, that money could go to his victims as restitution. It's something Droege is counting on, after the toll the case took on her family.
“I mean, it’s a lot of money,” she said. “My husband is blind, my daughter… I try to keep them involved as possible and what I can. It hasn’t been fun.”
Droege has created a GoFundMe link for her and her family to help recoup costs.
Shaw's attorneys refused a recent request for an interview. In September 2021, he told 5 On Your Side that some families received partial refunds and blamed the cancellations on Covid-19.
He also denied that he ever claimed to be Ferguson Police Chief.