A man convicted last month of posing as a licensed contractor and bilking a San Francisco homeowner and day laborers out of thousands of dollars is set to be sentenced to a year in county jail Friday, prosecutors said today.
Danny Ho, 53, pleaded guilty on Nov. 23 to felony charges of grand theft, misappropriation of construction funds, and fraudulently posing as a licensed contractor, district attorney’s office spokesman Omid Talai said.
Ho was arrested in April for the fraud, which involved the owner of a house at 171 Lee Ave. in the city’s Ingleside neighborhood.
In February 2010, Ho entered into a contract with the homeowner and provided a business card with the license number and business name of another contractor who happened to have the same name, prosecutors said.
After being paid about $32,000 by the homeowner, Ho abandoned the project and failed to pay wages to the three day laborers he had hired for the job, prosecutors said.
The case was brought to the attention of the district attorney’s office by the nonprofit legal organization La Raza Centro Legal, which received complaints from the day laborers.
Ho had previously served time in custody for another contractor fraud case and had been cited by the California Contractor State License Board on at least six occasions for various offenses.
Ho has been in custody since his arrest on April 6 and pleaded guilty last month in a deal with prosecutors in exchange for a year in county jail, Talai said.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday morning at the San Francisco Hall of Justice. Following the sentencing, District Attorney George Gascon plans on holding a news conference to announce the sentence.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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