A small business owner I went to high school with offered to do some general contracting work for me to remodel my bathroom and kitchen. I gave him and his team approximately 1 full month to do the work while I was out of the state, and after returning it became clear this project would take a while longer. Every two weeks, I was told it would take another two weeks. It ended up taking 5 months in total as the GC routinely did not show up or was working on other projects. During this time, I repeatedly asked for estimates and pricing information to get things done but at the beginning we had discussed a range of total budget costs. As the work was being done, he filled out a spreadsheet and then asked for money. After the end of the 3rd month, what I had allocated to labor costs in my budget had been reached and I told him what I wanted completed before giving him any more money. I also asked for estimates on how much would be needed. After while it became clear to me that he was intending to charge far too much money for everything, based on the feedback of my neighbors, friends, and family. I looked it up online and arrived at the same conclusion. It also became apparent that this contractor was taking advantage of the credit card I had set aside to handle materials purchase, for which I have multiple records of fraudulent charges unrelated to the job and that I did not authorize. I was working from home almost every day to be attentive to their activity, and I can confidently say that no more than an average of 15 hours of labor were accomplished each week. At this point I decided that the best thing to do was to get my money's worth and finish as much as possible before he cut and ran off with all of the money and <50% of the work done. I managed to convince him to have a subcontractor finish more of the work, though the end product is far from finished. It took them another 2 months, but finally I got my key back. After the last day of completed work and the key hand off, the GC started requesting money from me in the form of Chase Quickpay. You see we never had a contract, and he never got any signatures. The best we have is a poorly-formatted, mathematically incorrect excel document with arbitrary values for arbitrary units of work. Based on my own ability to read and categorize the labor, it appears he has charged me somewhere between 200-250% of market prices for similar work. It also turns out his businesses only reviews online are 1-star and describe similar situations to mine. Now his lawyer has sent a letter of intent to file a Mechanic's Lien on my property for the remaining balance. Of the total balance, I have paid around 60% of it and to me that constitutes a value greater than market price already. What should I do?