BR Construction

This company, BR Construction, and its owner, Barry Ruth, is a thief! He literally stole $8,000 from me when our mortgage company mistakenly sent him an insurance settlement claim check because he had done the estimate on repairing storm damage on our property. Notice I said estimate, not repairs.

A few years back we had a severe Summer storm with high winds that took down several large trees on my property here in West Bowmans. The fallen trees pretty much destroyed a large multi-dog kennel, and damaged our pool. Shortly thereafter a claims adjuster from our mortgage company's insurance agency came to our property for a damage estimate. The estimate was for something like $8,900 to repair the damaged structures and clean up the 9 fallen trees.

Myself, being totally naive to the insurance claims process, thought I needed an estimate from a business. Luckily (or so I thought at the time) I had a friend (again, so I thought at the time) that owned a home repair and construction company; Barry Ruth and his company, BR Construction. I approached Barry and asked him if he had the time to come to my place and give me a written estimate for the repairs. I also told him that I was probably going to do the repairs myself, but that I would pay him for the estimate even though he supposedly gives fee estimates. So, around that time Mr. Barry Ruth and I think one of his workers came to my house and sat under my pavilion and I detailed the required repairs and what I thought the materials and the labor costs would be, which he jotted down on an estimate sheet. I told him that when the work was done and I got the insurance check I would give him something for his time and the estimate.

Over a period of several months I did all the repairs myself, with some help and purchased the materials as money became available to me, and when the mortgage company, Bank of America, aka BofA, kept telling me, "The check was sent", it took a while to find out the check was sent to him. When asked, he kept saying he never got a check, until I got proof from BofA. Then, he said he was keeping it! I was stunned as I thought we were friends, and had been for years. I immediately told him I would be right up to his place to 'discuss' this poor decision on his part. He told me that if I came on his property he would have me arrested! He could only have gotten up the courage (for lack of a better word) to do this because he knew I was on State parole and even the slightest offense would have sent me back to prison, let alone what I would have done to this walking, talking, POS!

I tried every avenue to get this mess straightened out. BofA had gotten the check from the insurance company and passed it on to the name on the estimate, and when confronted about their mistake said only that it was out of their hands and was between me and him! The insurance company would not deal with me because they were lender placed insurance and their customer was BofA and not me. Law enforcement initially wanted to be helpful because I guess they already knew he was a conniving scumbag, but eventually determined that legally I had no standing because this was between BR Construction and BofA, and from a legal standpoint my only action was with BofA, who at this point was tired of me bothering them and didn't want to get involved, nor admit that they had made a mistake.

At about this time law enforcement had spoken to Barry Ruth and he had claimed that he had in fact done all the work! I was flabbergasted (I guess would be a good word to describe one of my feelings). And, don't ask me why, but even at this point I was stunned at such a bold outright lie from this POS, because Lehighton is a small town and what goes on is common knowledge usually. I later heard that he had instructed his workers that if asked they were supposed to lie and say they had done the jobs at my place. This can easily be disproven because I have pictures of myself, family members and friends actually doing s