The Pool Guy Is Getting Away With It :(

So it appears that our pool guy is getting away with stealing our money. He has taken our money, cancelled his phone lines, moved from his house and put it up for sale.
Dave went to see a lawyer yesterday and he basically wanted upwards of $5000 to do anything. It was so frustrating because he told Dave $3500 and then when I got on the phone there were all of these hidden charges. When I started questioning him (quite aggressively because I was miffed) the lawyer seemed to lose his ability to speak in coherent sentences. If grilling from me causes this imagine how he would react in court! Honestly!

Anyway, basically what we learned is that we can't put a lien on his house because we didn't do any work on it. We CAN place a judgment which would consist of getting a lawyer (which they said we could sue for the entire $52,000 it costs us to do the pool), but the problem is that since the criminal courts are so bogged down they are not prosecuting civil cases (which is what we have). In a nutshell, it would be close to impossible to get a judgment against him prior to his house selling.

The last resort that we have and can exercise is to have him and his wife (both owners of the company) arrested for Fraud. This would be the most cost effective option, but Dave is concerned of retaliation. Since they know where we live he is afraid that the pool guy will poison our dogs or do something to our house. He is also concerned about what would happen to the children. Kevin and his wife have two small kids.

I don't know if I have lost some compassion or something, but I think they should have thought about that prior to stealing our money. I just don't think that it's fair that someone should be able to get away with something like that. Not to sound childish, but it's so unfair!

We have hired someone to look into his financial background to see if it is even worth pursuing the lawyer thing (with a different lawyer of course).

Any suggestions?????