What to Do When a Houston Contractor Takes Your Deposit and Disappears
Every major storm that crosses Harris County is followed, within weeks, by a second wave of damage. Not wind or water. Fraud. After Harvey, after Uri, after Beryl, the pattern repeats: unlicensed o…
Every major storm that crosses Harris County is followed, within weeks, by a second wave of damage. Not wind or water. Fraud. After Harvey, after Uri, after Beryl, the pattern repeats: unlicensed operators and out-of-state storm chasers saturate Houston neighborhoods, collect large deposits justified by insurance estimates, and vanish. TDLR complaint logs spike. The Texas AG’s consumer protection division starts fielding calls from the same ZIP codes. Harris County JP courts see new filings from homeowners who waited too long to act.
If you hired a contractor after this year’s storm season and haven’t heard from them in three weeks, this piece is for you. What follows is the specific Texas action sequence, in priority order, with real URLs and honest expectations about what each step can and cannot do for you.
Step One — Look Up Your Contractor Right Now, Before You Do Anything Else
Everything that follows depends on one threshold question: was your contractor licensed, and can you prove it?
Go to tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/ and search by business name, individual name, or license number. TDLR — the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation — licenses a specific set of trades: HVAC contractors and technicians, electricians, and several other specialized categories. Plumbing licensure has undergone regulatory consolidation in recent years; if your contractor was a plumber, check the TDLR database and contact them directly if you don’t find a record.
General contractors — the category most commonly involved in post-storm roofing, siding, and structural repair — are not licensed at the state level in Texas. That’s not an accident or an oversight. Storm chasers know this better than most homeowners do, and it’s exactly why they concentrate on roofing work. For a fuller look at what Texas actually requires — and doesn’t — from general contractors, our coverage of whether Texas requires a general contractor license and what to check instead lays out the regulatory gap in detail.
When you pull up an active TDLR record, you’ll see the license type, number, expiration date, and status. An expired license is nearly as problematic as no license. If your contractor did roofing or general contracting and there’s no TDLR record, that doesn’t automatically mean they were unlicensed — Texas simply doesn’t require a state license for that trade. It does mean the bond-claim pathway in the next section probably doesn’t apply to you.
Step Two — If They Were Licensed, File a Surety Bond Claim First
For TDLR-licensed trades, the surety bond claim is the fastest direct-recovery path available. Most homeowners don’t know it exists, and I’ve never understood why it doesn’t show up in consumer advice more often, because it should be the first thing anyone tells you.
Texas law requires certain licensed contractors to carry a surety bond as a condition of licensure. The bond is not insurance for the contractor. It protects you. If a licensed, bonded contractor takes your deposit and disappears, you can file a claim directly against that bond — the bonding company is on the hook if the contractor won’t pay.
Pull the contractor’s TDLR record and find the bonding company listed. If it’s not visible, call TDLR and ask for bonding information associated with the license number. Once you have the bonding company’s name, contact their claims line and ask for a claim form. You’ll need: the signed contract or written estimate, your deposit receipt or bank record showing payment, all written communications documenting the contractor’s failure to perform, and photos showing no work was completed or that it was abandoned.
Be realistic about recovery. Bond amounts vary by trade and license type — confirm the specific cap with the bonding company before you estimate what you might recover. After a major storm, multiple victims are often filing against the same bond, and claims are paid in order received. Clean documentation typically resolves in 30 to 90 days, faster than any court route.
One thing people get wrong: a bond claim and a lawsuit are not mutually exclusive. File both. Homeowners who wait for a bond claim to resolve before filing suit often find the contractor has crossed state lines before anyone can serve process on them.
Step Three — Send a DTPA Demand Letter Before You File Anything in Court
Whether your contractor was licensed or not, your next move is a written demand letter under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. It costs you nothing except time and a certified mail stamp, and it is the most underused tool available to Texas consumers.
A contractor who takes your money and vanishes has almost certainly committed a deceptive act under the DTPA: representing they would provide services they never intended to deliver, or accepting payment for work they then abandoned without legal excuse.
Before you can file a DTPA lawsuit, you must send the defendant a written demand and wait 60 days. If the contractor responds with a reasonable offer to make you whole within that window, it caps some of the damages available to you. If they ignore it, they’ve forfeited a statutory defense. The payoff matters: if the contractor acted knowingly or intentionally, a DTPA suit can yield up to three times your actual damages. The statute also shifts attorney fees to the losing contractor, which is what makes it economically viable for a private attorney to take a case on contingency even when the dollar amount isn’t enormous.
Your demand letter needs: your name and contact information, a description of the contract (date, scope, amount paid), a specific statement of what the contractor failed to do, and a dollar figure for what you want returned. Cite the Texas Business & Commerce Code Chapter 17 by name. Send it certified mail, return receipt requested, to every address you have — business address, personal address if you have it, anything on the contract.
A contractor who’s only received phone calls won’t answer. A contractor who receives a certified letter citing specific statutory authority sometimes pays, particularly if they’re running a marginal operation and the letter signals you’ve done your homework. Consumer attorneys who handled these cases after Harvey and Beryl say it works more often than you’d expect.
Step Four — Sue in Harris County JP Court If Your Loss Is Under $20,000
If the demand letter produces nothing, file in Harris County Justice of the Peace court. No attorney required. Filing fees are modest — confirm the current amount with your precinct when you file, since fees vary. The process was designed for self-represented parties.
Bring everything to the filing window: the written contract or any estimate bearing the contractor’s signature, deposit receipts and bank records or Zelle and Venmo screenshots, all text and email threads printed in chronological order, photos showing work that was never started or abandoned mid-project, permit records or proof no permit was ever pulled, and the contractor’s full legal name, business name, and every address you have.
Harris County has 16 Justice of the Peace precincts. You can file in the precinct where the defendant lives, where their business is located, or where the contract was signed. Check harriscountytx.gov/justice-courts before you go. A misfiled case can be dismissed and force you to start over — an infuriating way to lose weeks.
Now the honest part. Winning a JP judgment is achievable when your documentation is solid and the contractor doesn’t show up, which they often don’t. Collecting that judgment is a separate problem. A contractor who’s already left Houston is not going to write you a check because a judge said so. Post-judgment collection — wage garnishment, bank levies, property liens — requires additional steps, and if the contractor has no Texas assets and has left the state, collection gets significantly harder. A Texas judgment is valid for 10 years and creates a lien on any Texas real property the contractor owns. File anyway, but go in understanding the difference between winning and collecting.
Step Five — File a TDLR Complaint, but Understand What It Can and Cannot Do
TDLR cannot get your money back.
Say that plainly because a lot of people file a TDLR complaint and then wait months expecting a refund. TDLR’s enforcement tools are license suspension, revocation, and civil penalties payable to the state. Not restitution to you. What a TDLR complaint does: it creates a regulatory consequence that protects the next homeowner in the next neighborhood from the same contractor. That matters even if it doesn’t help your bank account.
TDLR enforcement actions are published at tdlr.texas.gov/enforcement/enforcementactions.htm. A documented disciplinary record there — civil penalties and license revocations for abandonment, unlicensed work, or fraud — can strengthen your civil case by establishing a pattern of conduct. If TDLR finds fraudulent conduct, that finding is useful context if the Harris County DA ever pursues the case.
File at tdlr.texas.gov under “File a Complaint.” You’ll need the contractor’s name, license number if you have it, and documentation of what happened. TDLR typically acknowledges a complaint within 30 to 90 days. A complex investigation can run six months to over a year. Don’t wait for it to resolve before pursuing civil options. Run these tracks simultaneously.
Step Six — File a Texas AG Consumer Protection Complaint and Know Why It’s a Long Game
File a complaint at texasattorneygeneral.gov. But first, understand what you’re actually doing, because most coverage of this step either oversells it or skips it.
The AG does not act as your personal attorney. Filing a complaint will not result in someone calling your contractor and demanding your money back. What the AG complaint database does is aggregate. When the same contractor’s name appears repeatedly from multiple homeowners across multiple Houston ZIP codes, that clustering can trigger an AG investigation and potential enforcement action — injunctions, civil penalties, and in some cases restitution orders bundled into enforcement settlements.
The AG has pursued Houston-area contractor fraud cases after major storms. After Harvey, the office secured multiple settlements with roofing contractors and restoration companies that resulted in actual refunds to individual victims. Those cases took years. They proceed when the AG determines an enforcement action serves the public interest, not on any individual victim’s timeline.
Your complaint creates a dated paper trail that is admissible context in your private DTPA lawsuit. It contributes to the complaint volume that can push the AG toward an investigation. And it increases the odds that the next homeowner who searches that contractor’s name finds a public record of complaints before they hand over a deposit. It’s a slow play. File it anyway.
Step Seven — File a Criminal Report with HPD or the Harris County DA When the Facts Warrant It
Most coverage of contractor fraud either buries the criminal angle or ignores it. Here’s when it actually applies.
The relevant statute is Texas Penal Code §31.03, theft — specifically theft by deception. The legal threshold is not simply “they didn’t finish the job.” A contractor who collected a deposit and genuinely intended to perform but ran into financial problems is in breach of contract. A contractor who collected a deposit while knowing they had no intention of performing, or who misrepresented licensure, insurance, or other material facts to induce payment, has committed theft by deception. Those are different situations with different remedies, and the distinction matters.
If your facts point toward theft — the contractor gave you a fake license number, used a business name that doesn’t exist, collected from multiple homeowners in your neighborhood and disappeared, or clearly had no capacity to do the work — file a report with HPD. For cases involving higher dollar amounts, multiple victims, or evidence the contractor has left Texas, contact the Harris County District Attorney’s office at harriscountytx.gov/da. The DA prioritizes larger-scale fraud. Single-victim residential contractor complaints often don’t result in prosecution unless the contractor has multiple victims or significant dollar amounts involved.
Even when prosecution is unlikely, the police report number has concrete value: it documents your claim for homeowners insurance purposes, strengthens your civil filings, and creates a record that can connect your case to others from the same contractor. Don’t skip this step because you assume nothing will come of it.
Step Eight — When to Stop Handling This Yourself and Hire a Houston Attorney
Vague guidance on this question is useless, so here’s a specific framework.
Under $5,000: Self-represent through JP court and file every agency complaint available. The math doesn’t support attorney fees at this level. Even with the DTPA’s fee-shifting provision, your case isn’t certain enough to attract contingency representation, and hourly attorney costs will exceed any realistic recovery. JP court was built for exactly this. You’ll spend 10 to 15 hours over several months — mostly waiting for court dates — and incur filing fees under $100.
$5,000 to $20,000: Get a free consultation before you file anything civil. The DTPA’s attorney fee-shifting provision means that if a Houston consumer attorney takes your case and wins, the contractor pays their fees, not you. Many consumer protection attorneys handle DTPA cases on contingency or reduced-fee arrangements for exactly this reason. The Houston Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service at hba.org can connect you with consumer protection attorneys for an initial consultation. Attorneys who’ve handled post-storm contractor fraud cases in Houston have seen this playbook before — after Harvey and Beryl, they’ve seen it many times — and can assess your facts quickly. For a broader look at what consumer protection remedies actually cost and yield, our legal & finance coverage addresses the full range of Houston consumer issues.
Over $20,000: Hire counsel and move to Harris County Civil Court at Law or district court depending on the amount. Treble damages under the DTPA combined with fee recovery create real settlement leverage, and contractors’ insurance carriers and bonding companies tend to start talking seriously once lawyers are involved. Call sooner rather than later. Statute of limitations periods run whether or not you’ve heard back from TDLR, and a contractor who has already left Houston becomes harder to serve and harder to collect from every week that passes.
Step Nine — Document Everything Now and Know What to Watch for Next Time
If you haven’t done the following, stop reading and do it before you close this tab.
Screenshot and preserve immediately: the contractor’s license number as advertised (on their website, truck, estimate, or business card); every text thread with the contractor in chronological order; the contract or written estimate with any signature; your payment records (bank transfer, check image, Venmo or Zelle confirmation); any permit application number they gave you (verify permit status through the City of Houston’s development services portal); and photos of your property taken before, during, or after work.
Houston-specific warning signs show up repeatedly in post-storm fraud cases. If you’re reading this before hiring rather than after, these are worth knowing. Unsolicited door-to-door contact right after a storm, especially from trucks with out-of-state plates. Demands for cash, Zelle, or Venmo — cash is gone the moment you hand it over, and digital payments move instantly, making recovery nearly impossible. Deposit demands above 50 percent of the total job cost are abnormal; standard practice in Texas runs 10 to 30 percent upfront. No local physical address, or a “local” address that turns out to be a UPS Store box. No permit pulled before work begins — in Houston, roofing, electrical, and structural repairs over certain thresholds require permits, and a contractor who refuses to pull one is either unlicensed, saving the fee, or hiding from oversight.
Texas’s Home Solicitation Act gives homeowners the right to cancel contracts signed at their residence within three business days, without penalty. If you’re still in that window and have doubts, cancel in writing via certified mail and keep the receipt. Three days goes fast.
The Sequence, Compressed
- Run the TDLR license lookup at tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/ today.
- If licensed and bonded, contact the bonding company and file a claim.
- Send a certified DTPA demand letter (required 60-day notice before suit).
- File a TDLR complaint at tdlr.texas.gov.
- File a Texas AG consumer protection complaint at texasattorneygeneral.gov.
- If the facts support theft, file a police report with HPD and contact the Harris County DA at harriscountytx.gov/da.
- File in Harris County JP court for losses under $20,000.
- Consult a Houston consumer attorney if your loss is $5,000 or more.
Every one of these tracks can run at the same time. None requires waiting for the others to resolve. The one thing that genuinely costs you options is delay — limitations periods run whether or not TDLR has responded, and a contractor who has already left the Houston area gets harder to find, harder to serve, and harder to collect from with every week that passes.
Post-storm contractor fraud in Houston follows a documented, predictable pattern. So does the recovery path for homeowners who act early, document everything, and don’t assume the process is too complicated to navigate themselves.
