STEINER & KOPPELMAN

Liens, Lies and Leaks. That is Steiner in a nutshell.

This formerly reputable company was aquired by David Steingas several years ago and the companys way of doing business went with the former owners. I foolishly relied on that reputation. Instead I experienced incompetence, deceit, dishonesty and corruption. I retrospect I should have seen the warning signs: The offer to work as a "project manager" for a "percentage of costs fee". The fee was below market but, in my defense, work was getting scarce and it seemed a market adjustment that was appropriate. Instead it was clearly a way for Steingas to to accomplish several objectives: 1) Cook the books 2) Line his pockets by using subs he either owned or were owned by relatives or relatives of his managers. The first warning sign was that his company had no bookeeping system (allegedly) and his monthly pay requests provided no backup showing amounts paid, amount of contract and amount remaining. He provided no lien waivers. He stated at the weekly meetings, every week, that the project was "on budget". The contract was for $3,000,000. At projects end it all came apart. Liens started getting filed by unpaid suppliers. Sub-contractors informed us they had change orders authorized by Steingas that had never been disclosed. When confronted Steingas played stupid and blamed everyone else (his primary trait). At this point under Minnesota law I was obligated to pay the subcontractors again because they did the work at Steingas' direction. I also discovered that the plumber was his foreman's brother, that he owned the cabinet company and that much of the material was never shipped to my job but, rather, to other projects. He obtained no competitive bids for these items and overbilled many hundreds of thousands of dollars. By the time I discovered this he had paid himself instead of the subs and the money was gone. The subs filed for bankruptcy. I was told by a prominent client and mutual friend of his that if I sued him I would get nothing and that I should settle with him because his real fault was that he was just a bad businessman and he would back up his work forever and was in fact "a perfectionist". I settled as the company had literally no assets and , as an experienced commercial developer, I would not have succeeded in court under the "you should have known better" doctrine. By the way during the period of construction I was focused on my 2 year old daughter's fight against leukemia and was not able to micro-manage the project for which Steingas was hired. He took full advantage of that situation.The first problem occurred with the first freeze when a slow leak from faulty plumbing installation saturated the garage ceilings causing them to collapse on a multi-million dollar car collection on Christmas Eve. His first words were "It's not MY fault". He did nothing and I turned it in on my insurance. It had been leaking for months and the entire structure had to be gutted for mold removal costing a fortune and raising my premiums. Soon after, many of the cabinets started falling apart (made by Steingas out of PARTICLE BOARD), paint crazed, sheetrock buckled, screws popped, tape joints fell loose cracks surfaced, garage doors fell down etc. No response whatsoever from Steingas/Steiner.Soon after problems surfaced with the neighbors and the City after I learned that Steingas had lied to me and them about the project and turned them into mortal enemies by trespassing on and damaging their property. The repairs cost me $100,000 and the neighbors still hate us. At the end of the day I paid $1,500,000 more than the contracted amount and have been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars correcting defects for which he has taken no responsibility whatsoever. Nor have ANY of his subcontractors. If I were to sell the house I would lose at Least $2,000,000 as it was worth the estimate - not the bill. The fact is Steingas is a pathological liar and completely untrustworthy. Anyone who hires him should do so with open eyes, a big bank account and low expectations. For instance he quoted $15,000 for the staircase railing. The carpenters ruined the railing FOUR times and spent five months re-building it over and over again.He billed me for all of it - $80,000.They were HIS carpenters. To add insult to injury I spent $100,000 in legal and accounting fees to settle all the claims with the subs and reconcile the true costs. STAY AWAY from this one man crime wave. This is NOT the old Steiner & Koppelman that was run by reputable people!