A Perth man who runs a house relocation company has been arrested and charged with breaching a civil court order after he allegedly ignored multiple attempts by magistrates across WA to engage in multiple financial disputes.
James Sinclair Thomson, 35, is the owner of Perth House Relocators, as well as JT Projects and JST Projects Australasia.
His business relocates “pre-loved” homes, setting them up with development plans, council approvals, renovations, additions, site earthworks and plumbing installation.
Other business names associated with Thomson include 1800 Houses, Perth Oversize Relocators, Buildtech Marine and Civil, Disaster Mitigation, and Perth Skip Bins.
But a growing lists of disgruntled customers claim Thomson has not honoured contracts, takes deposits without supplying them with a house, owes contractors pay for work, and hotels for accommodation and food.
Now Consumer Protection has released a warning against engaging with Thomson after nine separate complaints were made to the watchdog who claim he took more than $1 million in payments and failed to deliver the contracted services.
“We have received multiple detailed complaints alleging that Mr Thomson accepted very large sums of money but failed to deliver the homes or complete the work he promised, leaving consumers financially and emotionally distressed,” Consumer Protection Commissioner Trish Blake said.
“In several cases, homes were delivered but left unassembled or uninhabitable, while in others no home was delivered at all despite invoices being paid in full.”
Last month, WAtoday exclusively revealed that Thomson was being sued by multiple clients, with default judgments issued after he failed to engage with the legal processes.
Thomson told this masthead at the time that he did not receive any of the paperwork because they had been sent to the wrong address.
His legal issues were later compounded by allegations he assaulted one of the aggrieved complainants, who confronted him at a worksite in Bridgetown claiming Thomson owes him $120,000 for a house he never received.
During that confrontation, Josh Aylett alleged that Thomson tailgated him for 40 kilometres to Nannup, T-boned his car and pepper-sprayed him in the face. Thomson was arrested and charged with dangerous driving, no authority to drive, possessing a controlled weapon, endangering the life, health and safety of a person, and cause poison to be administered.
Thomson pleaded not guilty to the allegations, as well as failing to comply with a direction and contravening the provisions of a planning scheme.
On Sunday night, however, he was slapped with two more criminal charges after he was arrested at a Baskerville property east of Perth and charged with two counts of “an arrested person who, without reasonable excuse, contravened his or her undertaking commits an offence”.
Those charges relate to the default civil judgments that have been made against him.
Thomson spent Sunday night in the lock-up before appearing in Perth Magistrates Court on Monday.
During that hearing, he told the magistrate a civil judge had told him he should not have been on bail and that “gentleman that’s suing me over a forklift sent my documents to the wrong address”.
Thomson was told he needed to get legal advice but declared he did not and would instead plead not guilty and then “try and get the prosecutor to discontinue it on public interest”.
He was released on bail with a $100 personal undertaking and no bail conditions.
One of his alleged complainants, who asked not to be named, said Thomson has allegedly repeatedly used “delay tactics” to evade being brought to justice.
She claims Thomson is “wasting considerable public resources in all his court cases”, and alleges that “overall he’s making a mockery of the system”.
Others who have spoken to this masthead but asked to remain anonymous include tradesmen who worked for Thomson but claim they were never paid, including one electrician who claims Thomson owes him $14,000 for work across five jobs.
Meanwhile, the Jurien Bay Hotel has blacklisted Thomson and commenced legal action, claiming he owes more than $2500 in unpaid bills.
When contacted by this masthead about the group’s claims last month, Thomson said his highly successful business had poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into communities up and down the state, and had thousands of happy clients in the four years it has been operating.
Thomson said he had engaged his own lawyer to sue those who had allegedly made defamatory comments about him online, and said their complaints had turned into a witch hunt that had forced the closure of his social media and bank accounts after they were reported as dodgy.
“There’s a couple of contractors that have been caught up in this who we do owe money to,” he said.
“But we can’t pay them because the clients aren’t paying us. Our income stopped, or not stopped completely, but stopped to the point where I think we turned over [$5 million] or $4 million last year, and so that’s dramatically gone down in the last few months.
“So there’s a couple of contractors caught up who we do owe the money to, and we are litigating that, and have told them what’s happening.”
Thomson claimed he would be getting the default judgments against him set aside because he was not properly served the paperwork.
Blake urged the community to exercise caution and avoid engaging Thomson, or any of the businesses he trades under, for house relocation services.
“Given the scale of the alleged losses – more than $1 million across nine consumers – and the recurring issues reported, it is important that Western Australians are alerted to the risks of dealing with this trader,” the commissioner said.
Those who believe they have been affected by Thomson’s conduct are urged to lodge a complaint on the Consumer Protection website.
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