14 News Investigates: Evansville couple accused of using LLC to defraud victims

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) - An Evansville couple is facing 35 charges of theft and fraud and authorities say this is years in the making.

Richard and Emily Bogacki were charged late last week.

Richard is already in prison for a case we previously told you about.

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In this case, Emily is charged too.

Our cameras were there when she was in court Monday afternoon, after being released on a $7,500 bond over the weekend.

The arrest affidavit shows Richard and Emily operated and LLC for four years under fraudulent circumstances and defrauded countless victims in the Evansville area for losses around $200,000.

Authorities say they defrauded people under the company Ramtec Industries.

Police say for years they booked job after job, and did very little of the work in many cases.

Officers say the Bogackis put 22 people out more than $200,000. Five of them have gotten their money back, but police say the rest are still out a combined $190,000.

“We just assumed if there were high ratings and a nice, fancy website. That we would be able to get somebody that did quality work,” Rosemary Bishop, who hired Ramtec in 2023 said.

The Vanderburgh County Building Commission says Ramtec never had any licensed contractors.

“It was just really sick. How he played me. And Emily as well, in the background,” Bishop said.

Rosemary Bishop is an Owensboro native.

She says she hired Ramtec in August of 2023 to make improvements to her mother’s home, after she died from cancer.

But Bishop lives all the way in Oregon.

“He was very adamant about promising me the moon and stars with anything he did,” Bishop said.

Once she put money down, Bishop said he built up her trust and said his crew was hard at work on her requests.

“He would have his kids in the background of the phone. You could hear his kids playing, you could hear him being a good parent. So you really got this idea, this is a good man,” she said.

That’s what she thought, until her realtor called.

“He gave me a call and he said, ‘hey Rosemary, I just want you to know, I haven’t seen those guys at the house.’ And I said, ‘wait, what? And he said, ‘yeah, I haven’t seen any work done at the house.’”

Bishop said a neighbor went inside to confirm and nothing had been done.

“He said, ‘oh you know this is the second set of contractors I’ve had to let go. These lazy, good for nothings,’ and he blamed it all on his crew.”

Bishop says Ramtec did randomly show up at her mother’s home last year and tear up the floor and hit a water pipe, leaving a mess.

Threes year before this, another customer, Jessica Meyers also waited for work to be done on her home.

“We contacted him several times about why nothing was being done. And he had a lot of excuses for why nothing was done. That he was sick, he was in the hospital. Someone in his family was sick,” she said.

Meyers says she and her husband drained their savings, more than $10,000, to make improvements to their house.

“With having three kids, and the cost of living being so high, we could really use that. And we need to finish what we started. We’ve kind of just been doing a little at a time as we come across the extra money to get that done,” Meyers said.

As for Bishop, she’s out around $5,000 she says the Bogackis cost her the chance to turn her childhood home into a rental property.

“My mother worked all of her life to pay that house off. She worked herself to the bone. Two different jobs, all her life. I wanted to rent it out in an affordable way, so another family could have a space, have a backyard without breaking the bank.”

Bishop has this message to Emily and Richard.

“You’re well aware of what you were trying to pull. And I do not understand why in the world you would hurt people like this, especially being family people. I know that you’ve got children and you’ve got parents and family that you care about and that you’re trying to set up for a good life, but why ruin other families lives for that?”

Meyers and Bishop say they hope the pair both gets prison time.

“I hope they both go to prison. I hope they serve time and I hope that myself and all of the victims can receive what we are owed,” Meyers said.

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