‘A web of lies’: Attorney petitions NC to charge Charlotte log cabin seller

A Durham attorney is petitioning the state attorney general’s office to pursue criminal charges against the woman who ran a Charlotte company that dozens of customers have accused of defrauding them.

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Michele Wilson Szabo and her company, American Log Homes and Cabins, left customers empty handed when her log cabin kit business folded in January. Would-be homeowners from across the U.S. paid between $14,500 and more than $25,000 for discounted log home shell kits — some just weeks before the business shuttered. They’ve been told they won’t receive their money back.

The company was the subject of an exclusive investigation by The Charlotte Observer in May.

Szabo, through her attorney, has said that closing the business was unforeseen and unavoidable. But Garrrett Davis, an attorney representing several of the business’ former customers, is urging the attorney general’s office to prosecute Szabo “to the fullest extent of the law” for what he characterizes as a scheme to “obtain [my] clients’ hard earned money” through deception. The consumer protection division of the agency has been investigating American Log Homes and Cabins since March.

In a nearly 200-page letter on July 22, Davis also urged the agency to ban Szabo from ever doing business in the state again, and to compel her to pay his clients restitution, which “could amount to millions of dollars.”

“It is extremely unlikely that Szabo/ALHC actually manufactured and delivered any log home kits the past few years,” Davis wrote. “Szabo manufactured a web of lies and deceit to enrich herself at the expense of ordinary, reasonable consumers like my clients.”

Szabo’s attorney, Noel Tin, said Szabo never planned to close the business.

“American Log Homes and Cabins operated for 24 years without any issues,” Tin said in an email to the Observer. “Michele fully intended to continue the business and believed she could do so until the very end.”

The attorney general’s office began receiving dozens of complaints from former customers of American Log Homes in January after the business abruptly shuttered. The company had advertised heavily discounted log cabin kits online and in newspapers across the country.

Many accused Szabo of taking payment from them without intending to deliver the home shells.

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A Charlotte law firm that briefly represented the company said in June that it expected nearly $2 million in claims from former customers who had paid for kits but not received them.

The firm, Grier, Wright and Martinez, ended its involvement with the company weeks after the Observer’s report. The law firm had been “overwhelmed” with claims it could not fulfill since American Log Homes claimed to have few assets, an attorney for Grier, Wright and Martinez told the company’s former customers in a June 5 letter. That meant people who’d paid for log cabin kits would get nothing.

“We have concluded that, considering the number and total dollar amount of claims, and the ongoing costs of administering the claims process, it is not practical to make any distribution with the balance of funds on hand,” attorney Anna Gorman wrote in the letter.

That also means former customers would be unlikely to recover anything via civil lawsuits.

“There is little to no chance for my clients to obtain effective relief through a civil action commenced by a private attorney,” Davis wrote in the to the attorney general’s office. “Thus, in light of the amount of the ‘millions’ Szabo and her accomplices intentionally obtained through false, deceptive, and other means, this case requires swift government enforcement and/or prosecutorial action against the culprits.”

American Log Homes and Cabins had operated in North Carolina for more than 20 years under various names, including The Great American Log Company and Log Concepts LLC.

The investigation into American Log Homes is ongoing, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office confirmed. An inquiry by the consumer protection division could lead to civil penalties, restitution or injunctions, and the division often partners with law enforcement when criminal activity is suspected.

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Read the Observer’s full investigation here.