A Cook County judge refused Thursday to reduce the $100,000 bail set for a Highland Park home remodeler accused of bilking customers, despite a plea from his lawyer that he isn’t a flight risk.
The ruling by Judge Garritt Howard left eight of Fred Resnick’s alleged victims beaming at the Skokie courthouse.
“When the judge made his announcement, we all wanted to start clapping,” said Teresa Backes of Arlington Heights. “I thought it was the best outcome.”
Backes said she paid Resnick’s company, MoMax Builders of Northbrook, a down payment of $20,000 last year for an $80,000 second-floor addition that was never done.
Resnick, 44, has been held in lieu of $100,000 bail since he was charged Jan. 28 with felony theft and home-repair fraud of a Skokie couple for allegedly not starting work on a second-floor addition to their home after taking $120,000 from them last year.
Resnick also was indicted Wednesday on forgery charges in a Hoffman Estates case. He allegedly forged a lien waiver to persuade a homeowner to give him the final $7,000 payment on a project.
In addition, the Illinois attorney general’s office has shut down MoMax. Thirty-one people have claimed a total of $2.1 million in damages, officials said.
Three days before his arrest, Resnick was reported missing by his wife. Police found him Jan. 26 at a hotel in Racine, Wis., a day after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
On Thursday Resnick’s lawyer John Theis asked the judge to reduce the percentage of bail Resnick was required to post to 10 percent. Two weeks ago, a judge said Resnick would have to post 100 percent of the $100,000 bail.
“There was no evidence he was on his way to Aruba or anything,” Theis said.
After Assistant State’s Atty. Rosanne Pulia said that both Resnick’s wife and attorney knew that police were looking for him, Howard asked why Resnick had gone to Wisconsin in the first place.
“The best I can say to you is that he had a series of problems, business problems, he was very concerned about,” Theis said. “He has been depressed. He was trying to spend time alone to try to get his head together.”
Despite some disputes with former clients of MoMax, Theis said, Resnick’s business “had a track record of over 10 years of hundreds or thousands of satisfied customers.”
“This is not an individual who set out to take people’s money and then up and leave,” Theis said.
Backes wasn’t sympathetic to that argument.
“The only people I feel sorry for are his [three young] children, who have to live through the actions of their father,” she said. “But I feel no sympathy for Fred. He brought this on himself.”
