Ellis Contracting - Jeff Ellis Criminal - Disappeared with my 25K! Centennial Colorado

DO NOT USE!!! This guy is a crook! He took off with over 25K of the money I paid him in good faith.  He ripped my deck out, then disappeared with the cash.  So I have a mess, no deck, no cash. Jeff Ellis, the owner, is the absolute worst general contractor I have ever experienced.  His crew consists of young barely out of high school kids that are so green they do not even know how to use a post hole digger and had to be instructed by Jeff. However, Jeff is barely there to supervise which is scary. I also found out he did not even pay them!  My deck project was never finished and has been plagued by incompetence, constant delays, excuses, scheduling of sub-contractor issues, non-payment of sub-contractors and his crew, multiple days where he went dark and would not return my calls (currently in that state), lack of proper planning, damage to my property and ultimately disappearing with the $25,000+ I paid him in good faith.  During the boring of one of the holes for a large caisson he damaged my electrical and water lines that went to my well because he did not call to have underground lines marked.  He claimed they would not have been found because they were about 5 foot deep.  I asked the well company that I used and they confirmed that they definitely could have been detected.  They have seen lines detected as far as 20 feet underground.   I was without water for multiple days, and he attempted to splice the electrical line back together, then I had the well company fix the water line.  Jeff’s crew then buried everything, and then my water stopped working again! I had to manually dig up the hole again, down to 5 feet deep which I completed mostly myself because Jeff could not show up until about 1 PM that day.  Then I was without water for another day while that was being fixed, and then my jet pump started leaking due to running without water and I ended up having to replace that as well.  Cost me out of pocket about $2000 which Jeff never offered to cover.  Then he finally got a concrete company to come up and poor the slabs and caissons on a Tues, then he was supposed to come back out the following Tues to start actually building the deck.  I called, texted, emailed him multiple times starting that Fri, Sun, Mon with no response.  I also called, texted and emailed him multiple times on Tues (the day the build was supposed to start), and Wed.  I even drove to his house and left a note, NO RESPONSE!  I then luckily called the concrete company to see if I was on their schedule, and they informed me that they can’t get a hold of him either!  On top of that he did not pay them for the work that they did and they were getting ready to put a lean on my property!  He is currently MIA with the $25,0000+ I paid him (50% + 1 progress pmt)! He is a criminal at this point, having stolen my money and all he accomplished was to tear out the deck since I will have to pay the concrete guys myself to avoid a property lean. Now I will have to go to court to attempt to get my money back.  I have no idea what happened to him.  I should have bailed at the first sign of trouble.  Even if an emergency happened to not call your clients to let them know what has happened is total BS. Can't even get a hold of him or anyone (friends, family, business partners) to negotiate the contract breach.  DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU WANT A NIGHTMARE!