Bail Set at $130,000 for Accused Home Improvement Fraudster

David Sroge | Palos Park Police Department

Bail was set at $130,000 for a contractor charged in swindling a Palos Park couple out of thousands of dollars for home improvement work that was never performed, prosecutors said in court on Wednesday.

According court information and Palos Park police, David Sroge, 58, made a deal with the couple to redo their deck on June 17. The couple gave Sroge two checks totaling $13,000, with an agreement to start the job on July 14.

A few days after their meeting, prosecutors said that Sroge allegedly deposited and cashed the checks at his own bank. Sroge dropped some equipment off but never did any substantial work on the couple’s deck, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that when the project was still not completed on Sept. 29, the couple told Sroge he had ten days to finish the job or return their money. Sroge was arrested at the couple’s home on Tuesday, prosecutors said.

Sroge’s attorney told Cook County Judge Peter Felice that his client had completed one-third of the work promised and had dropped off $3,500 worth of lumber at the couple’s home the day of his arrest.

“Yeah, at the eleventh hour he decides he’s going to get off his butt and get the work done,” Judge Felice said. “Think of the turmoil he put those people through, if the allegations are true.”

Police interviewed the driver, who said he’d been hired by Sroge on Craigslist to deliver the lumber.

“The driver drove the lumber to the couple’s house on the roof of his car,” said Chief Joe Miller, of the Palos Park Police Department. “[The driver] was dressed in laborer’s clothing.”

Sroge has a 2012 conviction for theft and deception out of Crown Point, IN, where police there said he took $9,000 from a senior citizen for work he did not do.

He also being investigated for a similar scam in Plainfield, where a resident claims that Sroge was using a fake name -- Christopher Castillo -- when she hired him to build a storm shelter, CBS-2 News reported in May.

There is also a warrant out for Sroge’s arrest in Carol Stream, Chief Miller said.

“This is someone who makes a living victimizing people who do home improvement,” the police chief said. “He’s what we would call a serial scammer.”

Sroge is due back in court in Bridgeview on November 3.