Maine contractor accused of poor and undone work is arrested

The Maine excavation contractor accused of taking money upfront for shoddy or undone work was arrested Wednesday on felony charges.
It came the day after the Bangor Daily News published a story on Jake Brown of Palermo, whose company, JBRH Excavation and Welding Fabrication, already faces $400,000 in judgments that came after former clients filed civil lawsuits across Maine. Interviews with more former clients indicate that the damage across the state could be far higher.
Brown was arrested by state police and is at the Belfast jail on a warrant out of Somerset County for failure to appear on a class B theft charge and two Class C charges out of Waldo County of negotiating a worthless instrument, an offense usually reserved for writing bad checks, according to Maine State Police.
Brown had passed bad checks to a business called Knox Capital totalling $14,500, and that his arrest was as a result of that ongoing investigation, state police spokesperson Shannon Moss said.
“Brown was interviewed and he admitted that he knew he was passing bad checks, but that he had lost control of his business and was unable to keep up with money he owed,” Moss said.
Brown was still being held in the jail as of Thursday evening, and bail was set at $7,500, an official at the corrections facility said. Brown is expected to appear virtually in a Belfast court on Friday to answer for the Waldo County charge, a corrections facility official said.
In an interview last week, Brown denied that he owes many of the sums that former clients alleged, though he acknowledged that he owes money on certain jobs. He did not answer a phone call on Thursday, and it was unclear whether or not he had a lawyer.
Clients of Brown who accuse him of defrauding them expressed relief following his arrest.
“I know we still have work to do but this was a great start for all of the victims,” said Miles Hafner, who won a $278,000 judgment against Brown for work on a housing development in Litchfield. “It gives us all hope that he might be held accountable for his actions finally.”