Clients expose TikTok builder they say took thousands of dollars then bailed on job

Bart can sing, dance and put on an impressive performance at his client's job sites, just not the one they paid him for.

His real name is Chatchai Rimnongrua and he runs Chatchai Constructions.

His TikTok videos reel in young first home buyers like Zac and Kelly.

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"He comes across really genuinely," Zac said.

"Got a lot of charisma, very swag about himself but he's all talk, no action," Kelly said.

The Brisbane couple with a newborn hired him several months ago for a new retaining wall and the job has not been completed.

"So he's completely destroyed us and he's just been missing in action for the last two months," Kelly said.

Their home still features on his social media.

"I think he just went in there and just went, 'I got the money, I'm just gonna do a half-assed effort and get out of there'," Kelly said.

"We're nearly $16,000 out of pocket and he's not only just taken $16,000 from us, we can't even continue where he finished.

"He completely went against the engineering plans, everything is wrong."

Some of that money was inherited from Kelly's father.

"I hope Bart can sleep at night knowing the fact that he has taken that money that my dead dad gave me," she said.

Now Kelly has to return from maternity leave early.

"We saved for three years to have time with our baby so that we could be there and give her the best chance at the starting of a life," she said.

"He has completely taken that because we now have to pay someone else to do the job."

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Emily and Peter are another young couple left with an unsafe home.

"Since January this year he's completely abandoned the job, left our house on acrow props, the retaining wall is exposed, it's failing and we were completely exposed to the elements," Emily said.

They paid Bart for a new deck but now their dog can't even go outside unsupervised.

"So we'd initially reached out to Bart in July last year," Peter said.

"To date we've paid him just over $21,000."

Bart told his social media followers he would remove and extend the deck but that never happened.

"It's just broken promise after broken promise," he said.

"Using his kids saying that they're unwell, saying that they've had to go to hospital, using constant struggles in terms of mental health.

"I think that's a bit rich given the position that we've been put in."

So you can imagine their anger when they saw Bart on holiday in Bali just days after they paid him, even forking out for fresh tattoos.

"To see that happen was an absolute gut punch," Emily said.

"We paid you to do a job, not go to Bali and get $10,000 worth of tattoos with our material costs."

To make matters worse, Bart isn't even a licensed builder, so he's not allowed to take on jobs over $3300.

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A Current Affair got him on the phone and he admitted to doing the wrong thing.

"I take full accountability for even taking on these jobs greater than what I should be," he said.

"Obviously being a social media sort of influencer in that field, I was just being on there for the wrong reasons.

"My personal life has just done a huge flip, broke up with my baby mama, lost everything pretty much and mentally it's stuffed up you know my work life.

"I'm starting to try and fix things 'cause there's been a lot of money that I've owed.

"I'm trying to make things right."

A Current Affair asked Emily and Paul if they think they will ever see their money back,

"I wouldn't hold my breath on it," Paul said.

"We haven't seen a single cent back and we've had, again, countless promises of that money being returned."

Bart told A Current Affair "the clients are definitely going to get 100 per cent of their money back".

"You know, I just sincerely apologise to all of them, I've set up a payment schedule for them," he said.

But his former clients have been left disappointed by Bart's work.

"To the Australian public, just don't trust this guy," Emily said.

"We've learned a lesson, an expensive lesson, but we just truly just don't want him to do this to anybody else," Kelly said.

Since A Current Affair got involved, Kelly and Zac have seen some money returned.