Criminal Trial Of Bellevue Contractor To Start Friday

By Robert Frank
Crooked Contractors of Washington

EDMONDS, July 9, 2026 — Jenny Wolfe and her husband had the land. A side yard, big enough for an accessory dwelling unit, on a property in Edmonds where housing costs had priced their adult child out of staying close to home. What they didn't have, it turned out, was a contractor who would actually show up.

This Friday, a jury will be selected and trial will start in Snohomish County Superior Court more than two years after Wolfe first hired Bellevue contractor Linda Kim Brown. Brown, 37, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree theft and one count of filing a false tax return.

All four counts stem from a pattern that, according to prosecutors with the state Attorney General’s office, she repeated with victims in Edmonds, Bellevue, and Lynnwood. (Note: Brown also goes by the name Linda K. Gardenhire.)

Wolfe is one of them, and she's expected to testify.

In an interview last month, Wolfe told Crooked Contractors of Washington that she and her family met with at least three contractors before choosing Brown. She stood out, Wolfe said, for how knowledgeable and approachable she seemed — and for the fact that hers was a woman-owned contracting business, something Wolfe was genuinely excited to support.

"She came off as very knowledgeable. She was the easiest to talk to," Wolfe said.

Brown asked for a 50% deposit up front — $100,000 by check and another $11,000 in cash, for a total of $111,000 toward the project. Wolfe has since learned that most contractors are paid as work progresses, and that such a huge upfront payment isn't considered standard practice outside of Washington.

The project moved forward for a while. Brown brought in an architect to draw up blueprints. And there was the back and forth with the City of Edmonds through permitting, with eventual approval.

Brown was responsive, Wolfe said, until the came time to pull the right-of-way permit and actually start construction. That’s when Brown, and Wolfe’s money, disappeared.

"She stopped answering my texts, phone calls, and emails," Wolfe said.

With no other way to reach her, Wolfe contacted the architect, the only person she knew who'd also worked with Brown. While he hadn't heard from her either, he told Wolfe that two other families had reached out to him asking the same question.

Wolfe got their numbers and the three compared notes. The pattern was the same.

According to prosecutors, between 2021 and 2023 Brown targeted homeowners who hired her for remodeling projects. She took large deposits, arranged for permits, engineering and drawings. She never started construction and abandoned the projects.

Wolfe kept looking for answers on her own.

She tracked Brown to a job site — a project Brown was doing for a neighbor of Wolfe's aunt, under a business name Wolfe says had already changed since signing their contract. Brown's brother was on site, and he told Wolfe he knew nothing about the dispute. Later, though, she found records showing him listed as a co-owner on some of Brown's business names.

Wolfe says that same property has since had serious water damage, something she attributes to the quality of the work Brown's business did there, while ignoring other families who'd already paid her.

Getting anyone to take the case seriously, Wolfe said, took persistence.

She called the state Department of Labor & Industries, the county prosecutor, even the FBI's tip line, and reached out to local news outlets trying to get Brown's name out before anyone else hired her. It took roughly a year and a half from the time she started making calls to the point that charges were filed, after Snohomish County Prosecutor Jason Cummings requested the state attorney general investigate.

According to the charging documents, Brown is accused of defrauding three homeowners through a series of transactions between January 2021 and June 2023, each exceeding $5,000 in value, and of filing false excise tax returns on behalf of four different business entities: Aura Construction LLC (of Bothell), KAIX Remodel LLC (Everett), KAM Contracting LLC (North Bend), and ProBuilt LLC (Mill Creek).

Prosecutors allege Brown failed to report roughly $1.5 million in business income and withheld more than $72,000 in sales tax collected from customers.

If Brown is found guilty, she faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and/or a $20,000 fine for every theft count, plus restitution and costs. The fraudlent tax return count carries a maximum five-year prison sentence and/or a $10,000 fine.

The combined losses among three of the victims is about $600,000, Wolfe said.

Wolfe doesn't expect to get her money back. She and her husband took out a home equity line of credit to help cover the loss. The ADU — the reason they started this whole process — isn't getting built.

What stays with her, she said, isn't just the money. It's how easy the whole thing was for Brown to do, and how hard it was for anyone to stop her. Washington doesn't require contractors to pass a competency test or undergo a real background check, Wolfe points out. And registering a new contracting business costs a few hundred dollars and takes a matter of weeks, regardless of what happened at the last one.

"I question everything now," Wolfe said. “This was eye-opening. We trusted her. She presented herself so well — she'd talk with me about her daughters. I don't even know if she actually has daughters, or if that was part of the con, a way to build a bond with me. It makes me very hesitant to hire anyone else.”

Wolfe says she wants two things out of the trial: for Brown to be held accountable, and for lawmakers to close the loophole that let Brown, she says, walk away from one failed business and open another.

“I'm furious at the system too — that these contractors can just close a business and reopen a new one. It blows my mind,” she said. “You let someone into your home, and they lie to you and are just there to steal. I might as well have been robbed at gunpoint.”