An Ellensburg man will be getting used to life behind bars after he was sentenced to five years in prison for committing the biggest contractor fraud scheme in state history, according to Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries.
“This is hands-down the biggest contractor fraud case we have ever seen,” said Steve Reinmuth, L&I’s assistant director of Field Services and Public Safety.
On Monday, 61-year-old John Robert Mulinski was sentenced to 57 months in prison for three counts of first-degree theft. Mulinski pleaded guilty last month to the felony charges.
According to L&I, Mulinski swindled customers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for unfinished construction jobs that often left homes in worse shape than when he started.
The judge also ordered Mulinski to repay victims in the criminal cases nearly $950,000.
“This is close to being one of the worst types of theft this court has seen,” Kittitas County Superior Court Judge Candice Hooper said at the hearing. She later added, “At this point, society needs to be protected from people who run scams such as this.”
The Kittitas County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office prosecuted Mulinski based on investigations by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I), Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office, and the Cle Elum Police Department.
L&I’s…