Prince Narang may live to regret the day he agreed to build a house for Mo and Evelyn Hoque.Last Thursday, Narang, 37, was arrested and charged with crimes stemming from his work building the Hoque’s West Side Avenue home.With a business renovating houses around Jersey City, the Hoques came to the project with experience. But this was their first foray into new construction. Mo says he found Narang in a Google search. “He seemed like an honest, decent, guy. He had a background in engineering. We kind of had a good rapport.” So in 2021, the couple signed a detailed contract with Narang’s company, Artisan Design and Construction, to build their 2,800 sq. ft. house. It took a year to get building permits. Work began in the summer of 2022.By the summer of 2023 the house was 85% to 90% finished. That’s when problems began to emerge. At first they were relatively small. The couple had specified in the contract that the house would have a metal roof. Narang began installing shingles. “He was like ‘a metal roof is an upgrade'” recounted Mo. When Mo called Narang’s attention to the contract, Narang said it would only apply to part of the roof.But then there was flooding. “He wasn’t doing work that was critical to protect the foundation as well as the actual structure of the house” recalls Evelyn. “Any time there was heavy rain, there was water that was penetrating and flooding the basement.”Flooding in the Hoque’s basementHaving already received most of the contract price and with work left to do, Narang demanded an additional $120 thousand to finish the project, say the Hoques. The Hoques said no. Narang walked off the job.“We said ‘we can’t keep playing games with you, we’re just going to put a claim in with your insurance'” Evelyn remembers. Despite Narang’s pleas that she hold off, she went ahead and contacted the insurance company. To her dismay, the company said that Narang’s certificate of insurance was fake.With negotiations going nowhere and with the house nearly complete, the Hoques decided to finish the project on their own. A top priority was to get the house connected to the sewer line, which would help alleviate the flooding. But according to the Municipal Utilities Authority the required connection fee had never been paid. This was a surprise to the Hoques since Narang would have had to show the Building Department that the fee had been paid in order to get the building permits.Evelyn submitted an OPRA request to the Building Department to find out what had happened. What she found was a new problem. “He bypassed [paying the fee] by taking an old document he had from another project, putting our information on it and faking that he had paid the fees. He collected those fees from our bank, saying that he had paid them.”The Hoques reported Narang to state and local officials. They, in turn, referred Narang to the Hudson County Prosecutor who has now charged Narang with Theft by Deception and two counts of Forgery.The Hoque’s completed homeThe Hoques later learned that Narang’s project manager — who Narang had fired — had urged Narang to “do the right thing” and finish the job. “They’re going to come after you,” he reportedly told Narang. “His response was ‘so many people threaten to come after me and no one did anything'” the project manager reported.Others, say the Hoques, have also been victimized by Narang. Posts on Reddit seem to bear this out. “We’re the only ones who were willing to dig this deep” said Mo.There has been a silver lining. The Hoques befriended the project manager and several of Narang’s subcontractors, who helped in finishing up the job.“We did not want him to continue to do this to other people. We’re fortunate enough that we had the money to finish this and it didn’t bankrupt us. A lot of people this would bankrupt because they wouldn’t know where to get another 70 or 80 thousand to finish it” said Mo.Narang’s attorney, Alan Kraminksy, said that Narang “maintains his innocence and looks forward to his day in court and denies the allegations.”Mo has a glass-half-full view. “Despite the trials and tribulations, we’re finally in our house and can move on with our life.”–The post Couple Uncovers Dirt on Contractor Who Walked off Job, Leading to Criminal Charges appeared first on Jersey City Times.