Authorities are investigating whether a home repair job involved fraud. It's been an expensive lesson for the homeowner. A criminal complaint has been filed alleging felony theft by deception.

The case began with a knock on an elderly woman's door and nearly $38,000 later, police entered the picture.

The homeowner says if nothing else she's learned, "that I'll never let anyone in my home I don't know."

Patrick Fraser was the man who approached her. He told her she needed chimney caps but then claimed to find other repairs were needed. Over seven weeks the homeowner wrote the contractor nine checks totaling nearly $38,000.

"I felt he was using me for a bank," she says.

After calling police, relatives hired home inspector Greg Wayman to assess repairs done on the home.

Wayman says, "She paid $37,720 for work that didn't need to be done in the first place and now she has a roof that has at least $7,000 damage."

The damage was caused by cracking two-year-old shakes on the roof that the home inspector says didn't need new nails.

"This guy was so lazy, he only put the nails up as far as he could reach. He wouldn't climb up any further," the inspector said.

Wayman also found waterproofing that did not go all the way along the basement wall.

The home inspector said he couldn't believe what he saw in the gutters. Gutter guards to hold back leaves were installed incorrectly and there are no trees around the gutters in the first place.

Contractor Patrick Fraser says, "If they want to take me to court they can but everything is in the contract signed by the woman's sister guardian who is 65."

Thirteen years ago Channel 6 News interviewed Fraser who, at the time, was accused of bilking chimney customers to support a drug habit.

In 1993 he said, "My customers are more important to me than the drug."

Today, Fraser says he's been clean for nine years and his, "workmanship is OK" but home inspector Greg Wayman disagrees and the 85-year-old homeowner says her trust is what needs repair now.

"I thought he was a nice guy," she said. "I thought he was honest and all he did to me was lie to me."

The complaint alleging theft by deception was filed late Thursday.

The inspector found the work that started it all, the chimney caps, was work that was necessary but he says everything done after that was not.

Fraser would not comment on these allegations. His attorney, Lawrence Whelan, says his client fully intended to finish the work but was unable to do so because the elderly woman's family told him to stay away.