Lawsuit against Bruno Total Home Performance alleges fraud and deceptive business practices

Two weeks after a law enforcement raid on a prominent Bonita Springs air conditioning and home maintenance company, a former customer is taking legal action.

Lance Henderson filed a lawsuit in Lee County against Bruno Total Home Performance and it’s owner Louis Bruno, as well as one of the company’s employees. The suit also named GreenSky, a Georgia based company that coordinated Bruno customer’s financing.

According to Henderson, Bruno put a lien on his home and opened a line of credit in his name for work he didn’t approve.

“We’ve cast the net. Not overly wide here, but fairly wide. The old saying goes, when you raid the bar you take the piano player too,” said Henderson’s attorney Robert Goodman.

According to the lawsuit, a Bruno employee came out to Henderson’s home for a free inspection in November. During that inspection, Henderson says he signed a tablet giving the employee permission to look around his house.

During the inspection, the employee also asked for Henderson’s social security number and date of birth to check if there were liens on the home. Henderson says he was told the information would not be used to check his credit. Hours after the employee left, Henderson said different Bruno employees showed up and started doing work on his AC without Henderson ever seeing a contract or agreeing to anything.

On top of that, Henderson said a company called GreenSky got in touch with him claiming they financed some of the work Bruno had done to the home.

GreenSky told WINK they do not comment on ongoing litigation, but gave us a comment in a prior email about their relationship with Bruno:

“Notwithstanding the fact that GreenSky is a technology vendor and not a lender, the Company holds customer advocacy as its top core value. Accordingly, GreenSky takes its Merchant management responsibilities very seriously. We suspended our relationship with Bruno and are no longer originating new business with them. We are committed to ensuring that all customers patronizing GreenSky merchants are satisfied with their interactions with GreenSky and their merchants. We are currently reviewing our records on each Bruno customer to determine if any additional actions are necessary.”

They also said in a previous statement:

“GreenSky strongly advocates for customers and takes merchant complaints very seriously. In our capacity as program administrator, we worked diligently to investigate the complaint and as of this date, nothing we have uncovered suggests that the customer was unaware of the loan or the loan terms.”

Bruno representatives did not want to comment. We were not able to reach the employee named in the suit, however the lawsuit was officially filed late Monday night so no one named in it is even required to respond yet.