For some District residents, a simple basement or kitchen remodel project turned into something of a nightmare—water seeped into their properties, they discovered already-finished construction work was unpermitted and illegal, or the work shifted the foundation of nearby properties and forced their neighbors to be evacuated from their homes. At least, that’s what the D.C. Attorney General’s office is alleging in a new lawsuit.

Precision Contracting Solutions, based in the District, is accused of “shoddy” and “destructive” construction work in the suit filed Wednesday, according to a press release from D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine’s office. The “pattern of illegal behavior” outlined in the suit includes failing to get the required permits for remodeling and construction work, misrepresenting employees’ skills and qualifications, breaking the terms of their own contracts, and damaging properties they’re working on (and even, in some cases, neighboring properties). Racine’s suit names the company, as well as the owner, Derrick Sieber, and his father, Stephen Sieber.

“Our office has received more than a dozen complaints about the company’s shoddy construction work, which left District homes in varying states of disrepair,” Racine said in the release. “We filed this lawsuit to end the company’s deceptive practices, secure relief for harmed consumers, and to warn contractors that they will be held accountable for breaking the law.”

Derrick Sieber denied the lawsuit’s claims in an interview with DCist, pointing to the company’s dozens of five star ratings on HomeAdvisor. “I think it’s total baloney,” he says of the accusations in the suit. “Our record speaks for itself. We’re an open book … I stand behind my company. We’re a top notch company and hundreds of people will attest to that.”

There have also been more than a dozen separate private lawsuits filed in D.C. Superior Court against Precision Contracting, Derrick Sieber, or Stephen Sieber dating back to the year 2000, often for breaching a contract. Plaintiffs have also filed at least two federal lawsuits against the company.

Allegations of shoddy construction and remodeling work has come into the headlines more often in recent years, as D.C. has undergone a real estate boom that makes house flipping an attractive—and potentially very lucrative—pursuit.

In 2014, a D.C. couple sued a contractor for millions of dollars for allegedly completing badly done work on their remodeled home that included rotting wood and even asbestos-containing materials that weren’t properly disposed of. In 2016, the attorney general’s office reached a $1.3 million settlement with another father-son operation accused of selling people homes with leaky roofs and improper permits.

Sieber says that his attorneys are planning to file a countersuit against the attorney general’s office, and accuses a representative from the office of breaking into Stephen Sieber’s home to serve him with court documents. “In the discovery phase of the trial, they’ll have to show their cards and we’ll have a chance to have our day in court,” Sieber says.

A spokesperson from the attorney general’s office says that the accusation of breaking and entering is “an unfounded claim, and we will address that in court.”

Precision contracting and its owners “mislead consumers regarding the quality of their workmanship,” the attorney general’s lawsuit alleges. They advertise “vast experience with historic homes and architecture,” as well as “sophisticated structural underpinnings and alterations,” neither of which are true, according to the AG’s office. The lawsuit alleges that the work the company performs is often shoddy, causing structural damage to clients’ homes and even neighbors’ homes.

In one case from 2015 described in the suit, Precision Contracting told a client that a basement remodel project did not require an underpinning, as they had “a novel method to structurally reinforce the basement.” As a result of the company’s work, water began seeping into the basement mid-construction, per the lawsuit. The District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs issued a stop work order in the middle of construction when an inspection found that the work was being done improperly and that Precision’s workers had attempted to use concrete to hide the water infiltration, the suit says.

In another case, the company’s construction work caused the foundation of a neighboring home to shift, cracking the walls of the homes, per the suit, which says that the neighbors had to be evacuated from their house.

The lawsuit also contends that the company has used low-grade materials to complete construction projects, even as they charged consumers high prices for high-quality materials; the contractor failed to obtain the proper permits for work, leaving clients with a pile of illegal construction to explain to the city; left some projects completely unfinished, and in some cases refused to finish projects unless clients paid out extra money not agreed upon in the original contract; and used unlicensed contractors to complete work.

Sieber says he doesn’t know what the complaint is referring to, since it does not include the names of any of the clients alleged to have had bad experiences with Precision. He says that there was one case where the foundation of a building shifted and neighbors had to move out, but he contends that the damage was caused by another contractor’s work—work that Precision Contractors had been brought in to help fix. He also broadly denies that the company performs shoddy work or ever does work without pulling all of the proper permits.

“As a matter of law, we always pull our permits. We have an airtight system of expediters we use for every project we do,” he says. “I would challenge you or any of your readers, if you ever see one of our yard signs around town, and you look up from that yard sign, you will almost inevitably see a building permit in the window.”

Stephen Charles Sieber, the father of Precision Contracting owner Derrick Sieber, had his own contracting businesses called Sieber Construction, which was banned from operating in Montgomery County, Maryland for “false advertising, inferior workmanship, operating businesses under corporate charters that had been revoked by the state of Maryland, and falsely stating that he employed registered or certified engineers in his firm,” the suit says.

Precision Contracting does not tell its clients about Sieber’s history, and introduces him to clients by the name Stevie Marco and presents him as the company’s interior designer, though he is not licensed in interior design in the District, prosecutors allege.

Stephen Sieber resolutely denies those allegations. “I have no record. I am a law abiding citizen. I am a good guy. And for them to say I was banned from Montgomery County, there was never a court case. There was never a ban,” he says. “It was 30 years ago. There was a dispute with some consumers 30 years ago, I don’t even remember what it was.”

Court filings show that Sieber Construction entered into a cease and desist agreement with Montgomery County in 1989 and agreed to pay $6,000 to the county.

Stephen Sieber referred DCist to a customer he says has been satisfied with Precision’s work. D.C. resident Carolyn Torsell tells DCist that she spoke with several contractors to try to get her house rebuilt after a fire. She decided on Precision because she says their prices were the most reasonable, and she is happy with the work they’ve performed on her home so far.

“They saved my life. Now I don’t know about what’s going on, but if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be getting my house rebuilt,” she says, noting that employees at Precision helped her fight her insurance company to get more money for the rebuild.

According to the complaint, the company has harassed people who complained about their work, and threatened them with expensive litigation. Its contracts include a clause mandating that any disputes “are confidential with no public comment permitted in any form by either party,” ostensibly to stop clients from giving them bad reviews online, per the suit. (In 2007, the elder Sieber sued multiple D.C. residents, including a $6 million lawsuit against a Mount Pleasant woman, alleging libel after they left his old company negative reviews on Angie’s List, per the Washington Post. )

Derrick Sieber says that the nondisclosure wording was part of an arbitration clause in the contracts, and that the company took the language out about a year ago because a federal judge ruled it was not enforceable. He says there was never any broad nondisclosure requirement in any of Precision Contracting’s contracts.

The attorney general’s office is seeking an injunction to stop the company from continuing these alleged practices, restitution for victims of the company’s work, and a $5,000 civil penalty for every violation of the law.

This story has been updated with comment from Derrick Sieber, Stephen Sieber, and Carolyn Torsell, and additional information about private lawsuits against Precision Contracting Solutions.