An initial appearance is scheduled for Jan. 15 for a Lake Geneva contractor charged with taking more than $62,000 for projects in the towns of Walworth, Linn and LaGrange but failing to do the work.
Shannon W. Bullis, 43, was charged Dec. 3 in Walworth County Circuit Court with two counts of theft in a business setting of more than $10,000 and theft in a business setting of $5,000 to $10,000.
According to the criminal complaint, three residents in the towns of Walworth, Linn and LaGrange paid Bullis $62,421 for work to their properties, but Bullis never completed the work, and according to former employees, spent the money on personal items including a trip to Florida and at strip clubs.
The Town of LaGrange resident hired Bullis’ company, Bullseye General Contracting, to repair the roof on his home on Solid Comfort Drive in 2016 and made a down payment of $13,500 in October of that year, according to the criminal complaint. The work was never completed, and the resident learned in March 2017 that Bullis had closed to company in Wisconsin and moved it to Florida and Nebraska, according to the complaint.
The Town of Walworth resident hired Bullis in May 2016 to repair roofs of his house and barn on Brick School Road and wrote checks for $2,000 and $7,926.92 that month, according to the complaint. The resident signed a second contract with Bullseye in September 2016 to repair siding to his home and wrote checks for $5,180.17 and $2,000 for that job, according to the complaint.
Bullseye delivered materials to his home for the project, but they were sent cash-on-delivery, which the resident refused to pay, according to the complaint. The materials sat there for months, and no one showed up to do the work, the complaint states. The resident eventually hired a Bullseye employee, who had since quit his job at Bullseye, to complete the job, according to the complaint.
The Town of Linn resident hired Bullseye to repair three buildings on his property – a main barn, a hog house and his residence – that were damaged by a storm in 2016, according to the complaint. The resident forwarded an insurance payment for $31,815.22 to Bullis, and Bullis’ company completed the house roof and hog house but did not do the barn project, which accounted for $22,922.57 of the insurance funds that were issued, according to the complaint.
The former employee who completed the Town of Walworth project said Bullis had difficulty getting crews to complete jobs because paychecks started bouncing and every Friday was “a rush to get to the bank to make sure you got paid before funds ran out,” according to the complaint. He said employees would go weeks without pay, and Bullis used payment from projects for things like $4,000 to put his name on a racecar, a trip to Florida and patronizing strip clubs, according to the complaint. He said Bullis would sell new jobs and use those down payments to complete previous jobs in a “mini-pyramid scheme” arrangement, according to the complaint.
He said as many as 23 to 30 customers were calling wanting their job finished, no one would call them back and no money was available to complete the jobs, the complaint states. The company “closed its doors” in late 2016 and Bullis “took the money and ran,” the former employee said, according to the complaint.
