What to Do When Your Indianapolis Contractor Takes Your Money and Vanishes
September is peak contractor-dispute season in Marion County. Summer projects are wrapping up, storm-chaser roofers are cashing deposits, and incomplete-work complaints are spiking. This is the onl…
September is peak contractor-dispute season in Marion County. Summer projects are wrapping up, storm-chaser roofers are cashing deposits, and incomplete-work complaints are spiking. This is the only local guide that walks you through every realistic escalation path in order, with honest outcomes at each step.
If a contractor stopped showing up, won’t return calls, and has your deposit, here’s what to do right now: spend the next 72 hours building your paper record. Before you call the Attorney General. Before you file in small claims court. Before anything else. Everything that follows depends on it.
Here’s the full sequence — that first 72-hour documentation sprint through criminal referral — with honest expectations at every stage.
Section 1: The First 72 Hours — Build the Paper Record
“Document everything” is advice so vague it’s nearly useless. Here’s what actually matters legally and why.
Screenshot every text message and email thread with the contractor, including read receipts if visible. Export them with timestamps showing. Courts care about who said what and when — specifically whether you gave the contractor written notice of deficiencies and a reasonable opportunity to fix them before you terminated. If you haven’t sent that notice yet, do it now in writing. Even if you’re furious. Even if they’ve ghosted you. Especially then.
Shoot the unfinished work from multiple angles with your phone’s native camera, which embeds GPS coordinates and timestamp data in the file metadata. Don’t edit or filter these photos. The metadata is evidence. Before, during, incomplete, abandoned — every stage matters because they establish what was and wasn’t delivered.
Pull the original contract and read it carefully for three specific things.
First: the draw schedule, meaning when the contractor was entitled to payment and for what completed work. If there’s no draw schedule and you paid a large deposit up front, that proves you overpaid for work not performed.
Second: any lien waiver language. If your contractor hasn’t signed partial lien waivers as work progressed, subcontractors could still place mechanics liens on your property even if you paid the general contractor in full. Yes, you can end up paying twice. It happens regularly enough that it’s worth checking even if you think you’re in the clear. If a lien has already been recorded against your address, our coverage of how to fight a mechanics lien filed against your Indianapolis property walks through the response steps in detail.
Third: the contractor’s full legal business name. If they’re operating as an LLC — “Hoosier Home Repair LLC,” for example — you need that exact legal entity name to sue correctly. Suing the wrong name torpedoes small claims cases. People lose on this technicality alone.
Go to Indianapolis’s Division of Planning and Zoning online permit portal (indy.gov, under “Building Permits and Inspections”) and pull the permit history for your address. Most structural work requires a permit: decks, additions, roofing over a certain scope, electrical rough-in. If your contractor told you they’d pull permits and didn’t, that’s an independently actionable violation — and often easier to prove than breach of contract, because it’s documented in a public record. No he-said-she-said. It’s just not there.
Write out, today, everything you remember in chronological order. When you signed. What you paid. When work started. When the contractor last showed up. What was promised versus what was done. Memory degrades fast, and it degrades faster when you’re angry. This timeline becomes the backbone of every claim you file afterward — with the AG, in small claims court, or to a licensing board. You’ll reference it more times than you expect.
Section 2: Check Whether Your Contractor Was Legally Allowed to Do the Work
Indiana does not require a state license for general contractors. A person can hang out a shingle as a general contractor in this state with zero state licensing. No test. No registration. Nothing. That’s the actual situation here.
The licensing picture gets more specific from there. Electricians, plumbers, and HVAC contractors are licensed through the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency and must be. You can search their license status — current, lapsed, or revoked — at mylicense.in.gov. Free, public, takes about two minutes. If your dispute involves electrical, plumbing, or HVAC work, this is the first lookup you do. A plumber operating without an active IPLA license is operating illegally, and that illegality supports multiple claims simultaneously.
For general contractors, the more actionable question isn’t licensing. It’s permits. An unlicensed general contractor who failed to pull required permits has still violated Indianapolis municipal code. That violation supports a claim under Indiana’s Deceptive Consumer Sales Act (IC 24-5-0.5-3) if they told you the work would be done legally and properly — because performing work without required permits is a material defect in what was delivered. Unlicensed work by a trade that requires licensure — an HVAC technician without IPLA credentials doing a furnace replacement, say — is an independent violation supporting both an AG complaint and a trade board complaint.
Section 3: File an AG Consumer Complaint
File a complaint with the Indiana Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division. It’s free, it takes about 20 minutes, and it accomplishes several things — just not necessarily the one you most want right now.
File at indianaconsumerprotection.gov, or call 1-800-382-5516 (8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays). The online form asks for the contractor’s business name, contact information, a description of the dispute, and supporting documents you can attach. Upload your contract, texts, and photos.
Acknowledgment typically arrives within a few weeks. Actual resolution, if the AG’s office pursues the matter, can take months. The AG does not represent you individually and cannot order the contractor to hand you a refund. What the AG can do is pursue enforcement actions, seek civil penalties, and in cases with enough complainants, initiate litigation that produces restitution pools. Getting individual money back that way is slow and genuinely uncertain.
File anyway. Your complaint becomes part of a documented pattern. Indianapolis sees recurring waves of post-storm roofing contractor fraud, and pattern complaints are what move the AG from monitoring to action. If a licensed trade contractor is involved, the AG can apply pressure to the relevant licensing board. The complaint also creates an official timestamped record you can reference in your own civil case to demonstrate you exercised reasonable remedies — which matters more than it sounds when you’re standing in front of a judge explaining why you didn’t just sue immediately.
Section 4: Sue in Marion County Small Claims Court
Marion County’s small claims structure confuses even attorneys who don’t practice here regularly. There are nine township small claims courts in Marion County, plus the Superior Court Small Claims Division downtown. Which court you file in depends entirely on where you live — specifically your township of residence.
The townships are Center, Decatur, Franklin, Lawrence, Perry, Pike, Warren, Washington, and Wayne. Each has its own clerk, calendar, and local procedures. If you live in Pike Township, you file at the Pike Township Small Claims Court, not downtown. Unsure which township you’re in? The Marion County Assessor’s online property lookup tool will tell you in about 30 seconds.
The jurisdictional ceiling is $10,000, set by IC 33-29-2-4. If your dispute exceeds that — say, a contractor took a $12,000 kitchen remodel deposit and did nothing — you need Marion Superior Court’s civil division instead. That involves more procedure and strongly benefits from having an attorney.
For disputes at or under $10,000, Center Township handles most cases downtown at the City-County Building, 200 E. Washington St., Indianapolis 46204. You file a Notice of Claim form at the clerk’s window, pay the filing fee (confirm current amounts at the window or at indy.gov — the clerk’s office is at 317-327-4740), and a hearing gets scheduled, usually six to eight weeks out. You serve the defendant — the contractor — by certified mail.
One detail that will sink your case if you get it wrong: you must sue the exact legal entity. If your contractor operates as “Apex Roofing LLC,” sue “Apex Roofing LLC.” Not “Apex Roofing.” Not “John Smith d/b/a Apex Roofing.” Not “John Smith.” Look up the exact registered business name through the Indiana Secretary of State’s online business search at inbiz.in.gov. You need the name precisely as it appears there, including “LLC,” “Inc.,” or “Corp.” A judgment entered against the wrong name is unenforceable.
Section 5: Winning the Judgment Is Step One — Collecting It Is Step Two
Most contractor-dispute guides end at “you can sue.” That’s where the real work starts.
If the judge rules in your favor, the contractor still doesn’t hand you a check. A judgment is a legal finding that they owe you money. It is not money. Getting from one to the other takes additional steps most people don’t anticipate.
Wage garnishment is one option. If the contractor works as an employee somewhere — unlikely but possible — you can garnish wages through a Proceedings Supplemental hearing. You file a motion, the court orders the employer to withhold a portion of wages, and you collect over time.
You can record a judgment lien through the Marion County Recorder’s office if the contractor owns real property in Indiana. They can’t sell or refinance without satisfying your judgment first. Useful if they actually own something. Not useful if they rent, own nothing in their name, or have assets buried in a separate LLC.
A debtor examination — formally a Proceedings Supplemental — lets you request that the court order the contractor to appear and answer questions about their assets under oath. It’s how you find bank accounts or business property you didn’t know about. It also reveals, pretty quickly, whether collecting your judgment is even remotely feasible.
The hard truth: many contractors who ghost jobs have thin assets by design. The ones running roofing-deposit schemes typically operate as single-member LLCs with no real property, minimal bank balances, and a habit of dissolving entities and opening new ones under slightly different names. You may win your judgment and collect nothing. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sue — the record matters, the judgment matters, and sometimes circumstances change — but you deserve to know it going in rather than discovering it after six months of effort.
Section 6: File a Trade Board Complaint If a Licensed Trade Was Involved
If your dispute involves electrical, plumbing, or HVAC work, you have a lever that general contractor disputes don’t offer: a formal complaint to the relevant Indiana licensing board. These boards can suspend or revoke a professional license. For a contractor who works commercially or as a subcontractor, that outcome is often more immediately painful than a civil judgment.
Contact the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency at 317-234-3009, or file through the IPLA’s online complaint portal at mylicense.in.gov. Describe the work performed, the deficiencies or abandonment, and attach documentation. The board will investigate, which may include requesting a response from the contractor and, in some cases, ordering an inspection. A suspension can effectively end someone’s ability to work in their trade in Indiana — which a $4,000 small claims judgment cannot do.
The licensing board handles professional discipline, not civil damages. Filing here doesn’t replace small claims court. It’s a parallel track that serves a different purpose. Do both, and note in each filing that you’ve pursued the other.
Section 7: When Does Keeping Your Deposit Become Criminal Theft in Indiana?
This is the question every furious homeowner asks, and most guides handle it badly — either raising unrealistic hopes or hedging so thoroughly they say nothing useful. Here’s a straight answer.
Theft of property or money between $750 and $50,000 is a Level 6 felony in Indiana under IC 35-43-4-2. Below $750 is a Class A misdemeanor. So technically, a contractor who kept a $4,000 deposit and did no work could face a felony charge.
In practice, IMPD officers routinely decline to take theft reports on contractor disputes, and they’re not entirely wrong to do so. Criminal theft requires proving the contractor took your money intending never to perform — intent at the moment of taking, not just later failure. A contractor who started work, ran into cash-flow problems, handled things badly, and went dark is almost certainly civilly liable for breach of contract. Whether they’re criminally liable depends on what was in their head the day they cashed your check, which is genuinely hard to prove. District-level IMPD officers aren’t equipped to evaluate that, and most will direct you to civil court. Frustrating, but that’s the honest assessment.
The Marion County Prosecutor’s economic crimes division moves on contractor cases when there’s documented deception — and this is where the line between civil and criminal actually sits. Fake license credentials. Fabricated insurance certificates. A company name designed to resemble an established local business. Cases that reach the Prosecutor’s office typically involve a documented pattern across multiple victims, evidence the contractor never ordered materials or arranged subcontractors, or a contractor already generating police reports across Marion and surrounding counties. This is why the AG complaint matters: it’s building that pattern record, even when your individual complaint doesn’t immediately produce results.
If you believe your situation crosses into criminal territory, contact the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office and ask specifically for the Economic Crimes Unit. Come with your documentation. Don’t lead with how angry you are — lead with the specific facts that distinguish your case from a civil dispute.
Section 8: Free and Low-Cost Legal Help in Indianapolis
For losses under about $5,000, most private attorneys won’t take contractor cases on contingency. The math doesn’t work for them. Small claims pro se — representing yourself — is often the only practical path, which is exactly why getting the earlier sections right matters so much. But legal help does exist, and it’s worth knowing what’s actually available. Our free and low-cost legal help in Indianapolis coverage, organized by what you need, lists current intake contacts across the city.
Indiana Legal Services (151 N. Delaware St., Suite 1800, Indianapolis; 317-631-9410) provides free civil legal assistance to income-qualifying residents. They handle some contractor disputes, particularly where housing safety issues are also present. Call to determine eligibility.
Indiana Bar Foundation Lawyer Referral Service (317-269-2222) connects you with a participating attorney for a free 30-minute consultation. That won’t get you representation for a $3,000 dispute, but it can tell you quickly whether your situation has legal angles worth pursuing — including whether an attorney’s fees provision in your contract makes your case more attractive to take on contingency.
Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic serves lower-income Indianapolis residents with free legal clinics and limited-scope representation in civil matters. Contact them directly to confirm whether contractor disputes fall within their current intake.
The realistic gap: if you’re in the $3,000–$8,000 range — the sweet spot for roofing deposit fraud — you’re likely above the threshold where Indiana Legal Services is most likely to engage and below the threshold where private representation makes financial sense. Small claims, properly filed, is your primary vehicle. That’s not a failure of the system. It’s the system functioning exactly as intended for exactly this kind of dispute.
Section 9: Why This Keeps Happening Every September in Indianapolis
This isn’t random. It’s a documented, repeating pattern with a predictable calendar, and at some point Indianapolis should probably be angrier about it than we generally seem to be.
Spring and summer hail events in central Indiana draw out-of-state roofing crews who move city to city following storm damage. They knock on doors in affected neighborhoods, often claiming to have already worked nearby (“We’re doing the Hendersons’ place right now, so we can offer you a better rate”). They offer to handle the insurance claim directly. They collect a deposit in the $3,000–$8,000 range. In many cases they vanish before any materials are delivered or a single shingle is stripped. Some perform minimal work, creating a messier dispute. By September the crews have moved on to the next market, and the complaints surface here in force.
Indiana’s Home Improvement Contract Act (IC 24-5-11) was designed specifically for this. It requires written contracts for home improvement work above a specified value, mandates that cancellation rights appear in the contract, and gives homeowners a three-day right to cancel in certain circumstances — including when the contract is signed somewhere other than the contractor’s regular place of business. Your front door qualifies. Contracts that violate IHICA are themselves grounds for legal action under the Deceptive Consumer Sales Act.
Before signing any post-storm contract: verify the business address. A legitimate roofing company has a physical business location in Indiana or an established regional presence. Google the address. A P.O. box or a residential address in Georgia is a problem — and yes, this happens repeatedly. Search the company name at inbiz.in.gov. If the LLC was formed three weeks ago, that’s worth knowing. Never pay more than 10–15 percent down before work begins, and insist on a draw schedule tied to completed work stages. Decking stripped and dried in: next payment. Shingles installed: next payment. Final inspection passed: final payment.
Ask for the permit number before work starts. A contractor who hesitates to discuss permits is telling you something. Demand proof of general liability and workers’ compensation insurance, then call the insurer to confirm the certificate is current. Forged certificates are common enough that a five-minute phone call is always worth it.
The scheme repeats every year because it keeps working. The contractors know that most homeowners don’t know what steps to take, don’t take them in order, and give up somewhere around the AG complaint stage when nothing happens quickly. Going through this sequence in full — documentation, AG complaint, small claims, trade board if applicable, criminal referral if warranted — is the only thing that doesn’t let them simply move on.
If you’ve been through this and have specifics about a contractor that other Indianapolis residents should know, a Google Maps review showing up in local search results can warn the next homeowner before they sign anything.
For more local coverage, explore our Legal & Finance section.
