Lucy Sueiro watched an NBC 6 Responds investigation from October and recognized Gabriel Mira Dominguez.
“I went back to Google him again, and your story popped up,” Sueiro told us.
In January 2018, she says she hired him to take down an old fence and install a new one.
She says he used a different name and signed her contract as Juan Carlos Rodriguez.
“He was very well spoken, he knew what he was talking about,” she said. “He literally would come in exactly right under, just enough of a savings, to make the price seem believable and that it wasn’t too good to be true.”
Sueiro says she paid 65 percent of the project upfront with cash.
“He said it was for materials, so I believed it,” Sueiro.
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But she says he never came back with those materials to do the work.
After several months passed and she couldn’t reach him, Sueiro went to report what happened to police.
She discovered the contractor used a fake name, his phone was disconnected, and the company he had mentioned “Brother General Repairs” was registered to a different person.
Robert Haag told NBC 6 Responds about the similar incident that happened to him.
Haag says he found a contractor to replace a fence on Home Advisor but that man took his money and never came back.
He later found out the contractor, police identified as Mira Dominguez, had a criminal past.
“He was on probation. He had done the same thing before,” Haag told us.
After we contacted Home Advisor, the company gave Haag back the money he lost.
Soon after we aired Haag’s story, Sueiro got a call from police that Gabriel Mira Dominguez had been arrested.
“I feel like I was persistent,” she said. “It was eight months of trying to figure out who this person was so it didn’t happen overnight.”
Sueiro says watching our story about Haag encouraged her follow-up with police on her case.
“Oh that’s it, I’m taking this guy to trial. I need to prosecute him. This needs to stop,” she told us.
Dominguez is charged with grand theft in Sueiro’s case.
When he previously faced those charges, he was ordered to pay back more than $7,000 to the victim.
She calls it a step toward justice and a step toward getting back what she lost.
“It’s a big loss. Clearly, I haven’t recovered from it yet, so I was trying my hardest,” she told us.
An attorney for Dominguez told us they do not comment on open cases. We did not hear back from the company Brother General Repairs.
A representative with Home Advisor sent us the following statement:
“We are saddened to hear when a homeowner has a negative experience with a pro in our network. Brothers General Repairs was terminated from our network and we have been actively working with the homeowners to help seek a happy resolution.”
