BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — “He didn’t perform any work, he came took my money and left.”
Rasim Ahmetovic is talking about George Raymond Hagan Jr.
He was arraigned in Bowling Green on felony theft charges on Monday.
“It’s like a bank robbery to be honest with you,” he said.
He hired Hagan, the owner of PrismCore Pools, to build a pool for his three boys.
“So, this pool would just give them something to do over the summer,” Ahmetovic explained.
But he never got a pool. Instead, he says Hagan took off with $15,797, and never returned.
As the owner of a medical transportation company, he tells us that money was days and nights away from his boys.
“I worked hard for that money,” he said.
Ahmetovic describes getting strung along and ignored.
Stephanie Ashby says Hagan did the same thing to her.
“There should be laws in place that you can’t just going around destroying people’s property and taking their money,” she said.
The FOCUS team tried interviewing Hagan and his lawyer, Matthew Baker, who initially granted us an interview.
Immediately following Monday’s arraignment, both slid out of the courtroom’s side door, and weren’t reachable.
WHAS11 first started investigating Hagan in 2011, showing pool customers out of luck across Kentucky.
The victims inside that courtroom said they want Hagan to be held accountable.
According to Robert Appling, executive director of Warren County’s Contractors Licensing Board, accountability falls on homeowners too.
“Don’t pay for something you don’t have yet,” he said.
That’s his message to anyone hiring a contractor. While he’s revoked Hagan’s license for his pool company, the license only applies to Warren County.
He says Warren County is one of only three counties in the state that require contractors have licenses.
“What we know is that he has done this in other areas and has taken money and not completed the job,” Appling said.
His stern advice to homeowners: “You need to get references, you need to have a contract that spells out a start time and a complete time.”
It's something Ahmetovic wishes he did, when he found Hagan on Facebook.
“Just research,” he added.
The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office says they have five complaints against Hagan and his company PrismCore Pools.
State documents show in June, Hagan opened another company, called Mammoth Construction LLC.
His attorney is listed as a registered agent.
►Contact reporter Paula Vasan via email at pvasan@whas11.com, on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
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