Lies, forgery and one Nova Scotia contractor's incredible web of deception

In the evenings, at seven months pregnant, Brooke Crawford would steal herself away from the mouse-infested trailer where she and her family had been living for more than year, crossing her yard to lay vinyl flooring on her hands and knees.

As their first child slept, she helped her husband, Phil, in the piece-by-piece construction of their new home in the rural community of Clarendon Station, about an hour's drive north of Kingston, Ont. 

They had little other choice.

The nightmare of their first house burning down in July 2019 — Crawford waking to a blaring alarm and fleeing smoke with her baby in her arms — had been bad enough.

But it was when a smooth-talking Nova Scotia contractor named Shane Ross entered their lives soon after, the unimaginable financial and legal horror show began. Instead of rebuilding their home, he walked away with nearly $140,000 of the family's insurance money, leaving a trail of deception so brazen a judge would later call it "almost unbelievable."

"He intentionally hurt my family," Crawford said in an interview. "We're still trying to get out of the hole with the havoc that he's caused in our lives, and we just don't want that for anybody else."

Over the last five years, Ross has been charged with fraud, his companies have been fired from numerous construction jobs in Nova Scotia and Ontario, and he's been embroiled in legal actions with more than 30 contractors, property owners, towns and a Halifax university.

He has flagrantly disobeyed judicial orders and was even sent to jail for contempt of court. This week, he appeared in court on forgery charges related to a Halifax Regional Municipality tender.

Yet astonishingly to many who have crossed paths with him, Ross has managed to keep operating during much of this period, hired by unsuspecting builders as he remained beneath the public radar.

His latest company, one of numerous businesses he has created or controlled over the years, is even backed by one of the largest home warranty providers in the Atlantic region.

CBC has tried to catalogue the saga through more than 20 interviews with those who have dealt with Ross and a review of more than 1,000 pages of court, municipal, banking and business registry records.

As the lawsuits over unpaid bills and contract defaults piled up, Ross has boasted of his expensive watch, huge restaurant bills and taken vacations to Las Vegas and Scotland. He lives in a lakeside home in Lake Echo, N.S., and owns an Aston Martin luxury sports car.

Some who have encountered him speculate he has managed to survive by exploiting acute labour shortages in the construction industry, with builders desperately searching for anyone to get their projects moving forward.

Others point to how expensive recourse through civil courts can be when things go wrong, and Ross's knowledge of the legal system. They note his singular ability to talk his way out of tricky situations, a disarmingly gentle demeanour that can flip to aggressive when it suits his purpose.