An Alamance County, North Carolina, woman says she lost roughly $120,000 to a contractor who abandoned the renovation of her historic farmhouse and later pleaded guilty to six felonies. Sylvia Blankenship hired Danny Lynch in 2021 to restore a farmhouse she had recently purchased, a home built in 1910 with a log cabin as part of the structure, WFMY News 2 reported. She came forward a day after the station reported on a Guilford County homeowner with a nearly identical account of the same contractor.
Blankenship says she attempted to vet Lynch prior to signing the agreement. To do this, she requested that he provide some of his previous employers as references, then called each reference personally to determine whether they would recommend him. According to Blankenship, the response from these references was sufficient for her to continue on and sign the renovation contract, which totaled approximately $150,000.
The job started well, Blankenship said. Lynch showed up every day at first and was doing all kinds of things around the property. The daily visits then dropped to weekly ones, and eventually he stopped coming at all. She said she texted him repeatedly asking where he was and why the work had halted, and that he simply quit showing up.
Blankenship says she spent months trying to get Lynch to either finish the job or return what she had already paid, and neither happened. She estimates she was out roughly $120,000 before hiring a second contractor to complete the farmhouse. Blankenship, who is retired, told WFMY she cannot replace that money. Believing other homeowners had been through the same thing, she pushed for criminal charges, and that led to felony charges against Lynch in Alamance County.
How the Two Criminal Cases Against Lynch Resolved
Lynch pleaded guilty last month in Alamance County to six Class H felony charges stemming from multiple contracting cases. The court sentenced him to 90 days in custody and ordered him to pay restitution to the victims. Blankenship attended the hearing and said she saw no remorse from him in the courtroom.
The Alamance County convictions came on top of a separate case in Guilford County. There, Lynch was found guilty of obtaining property under false pretenses, failure to work after being paid, and misdemeanor larceny in connection with a different homeowner. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail in that case and ordered to pay about $37,000 in restitution. When WFMY contacted the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office and Alamance County Probation, officials said it was unclear whether Lynch had begun serving the 90-day sentence.
What a Restitution Order Does and Doesn’t Guarantee
A restitution order is a court decision telling someone who has committed a crime to pay back money to a victim for their losses. However, this is simply a judge’s ruling that directs the offender to make payments; it takes a lot of work to actually collect on restitution orders. According to the WFMY article, Blankenship stated she still hadn’t received any of the restitution that was ordered in her case. Probation is usually responsible for collecting restitution from offenders, which can be used as leverage to get the offender to begin making payments. However, there isn’t any guarantee that they will continue to do so, or that repayment will be full or fast.
North Carolina also regulates who can take on a job this size in the first place. Under Chapter 87 of the state’s general statutes, anyone who contracts to construct or manage a building project costing $40,000 or more must hold a license from the North Carolina Licensing Board for General Contractors, a threshold that rose from $30,000 in October 2023.
The board investigates unlicensed activity, issues cease-and-desist orders and can refer cases for criminal prosecution. It also lets homeowners verify a contractor’s license status and file complaints directly, which is the check a written contract, a license number and proof of insurance are meant to back up before any money changes hands.