Building contractor pleads guilty to stealing $180K from Hurricane Harvey victims

A building contractor has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty  to stealing $180,000 from 26 Hurricane Harvey victims.

Benjamin Wood, 36, was arrested and indicted in 2019 for aggregate theft, KPRC reported.

Wood has been known to take advantage of his workers, suppliers and his clients, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday. Harris County investigators were able to combine more than two dozen cases to make sure that Wood was convicted of a felony.

“After Hurricane Harvey devastated a record number of residents along the Gulf Coast, we pledged to go after anyone who used the situation to hurt or defraud others,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a release. “Prison time is the right result in a case like this because many of these people were cheated while the community was in its darkest hour.”

Wood has a history of misdemeanor arrests for credit card abuse, theft and wage theft from subcontractors.

After Harvey ravaged the area, Wood was able to dupe dozens of people into paying him for work he never did, according to the release.

Victims reported that Wood was able to gain their trust by talking about his military service and emphasizing that his company was “veteran owned.”

Wood’s sentence will run concurrently with a ten year sentence he received in Montgomery County for doing the same thing to dozens of people there.