The office of Attorney General Aaron Frey has received 10 complaints about a Waldo County contractor who has been accused of taking money upfront for poor or undone work and was arrested Wednesday after allegedly writing bad checks.
Jake Brown of Palermo and his company, JBRH Excavation and Welding Fabrication, already face $400,000 in civil court judgments that came after four former clients filed lawsuits. Interviews with more former clients indicate that the damage across Maine could be higher.
Since the Bangor Daily News first reported these claims on Tuesday, 15 additional people reached out to a reporter to say Brown owed them money. A Facebook page that was started in 2022 by people who alleged similar conduct while Brown lived in North Dakota ballooned from just over 200 members early in the week to more than 400 by Friday afternoon.
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Brown missed an initial court hearing in September in Skowhegan, where he was to answer for a felony class B theft charge, according to Somerset County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney. That prompted a warrant for his arrest, which was carried out Wednesday by the Maine State Police, which also charged him with two counts of negotiating a worthless instrument, a class C felony offense.
In a police interview that day, Brown admitted that he passed bad checks because he had “lost control” of his business and was unable to keep up with debts, state police spokesperson Shannon Moss said. The bad checks totaled $14,500 to a business called Knox Capital.
It’s unclear what’s next for Brown, whose initial Friday court appearance came via Zoom from the Waldo County jail in Belfast. Cash bail was set at $500, and his next court date is scheduled for November. He did not speak at the hearing, and he was deemed partially indigent and assigned a court-appointed lawyer. Brown didn’t answer a reporter’s call on Friday.
Frey spokesperson Danna Hayes declined to say whether the agency will prosecute the contractor over the conduct alleged in numerous court judgments and complaints. She declined to say how many complaints came in before and after the BDN article this week.
Brown’s confession will make the Waldo County case easier to prosecute, said Natasha Irving, the region’s district attorney, but she was unsure if more charges were coming against him.
“With a lack of criminal history, he’s not going to be held on high cash bail or anything,” Irving said. “It’s not acceptable what he did, by any means, but he’s not a severe risk to public safety.”
