West Coast Builders 2 Fraud ALERT
Alerting California homeowners to the fraudulent practices of West Coast Builders 2 and Ben Hunter/Ben Nino Hunter/Ben Halifi aka "Archie" and Moe Elkarif/Moran Elkarif aka "Morgan"
** nothing in this website refers to home builders/home remodeling companies with very similar names based in California. Everything in this website pertains ONLY to
Don't do business with West Coast Builders 2. Ever. For any reason.
Moran Elkarif aka Moe Elkarif and Ben Hunter aka Ben Nino Hunter aka Ben Halifi's license has now been revoked by the CSLB. See here. They absolutely should not and cannot be contracting at all. Do not believe them if they say they are allowed to or that it is a clerical error on the CSLB's website.
Ben Hunter had a previous contractor's license taken away by the CSLB in 2014 (License number #: 899169)
After Ben lost his contractor's license, he worked as a salesman for another contractor, Orion Remodeling. After a CSLB investigation, Orion ALSO had their license revoked. Even though Ben was not on the license, his actions in while working for Orion were so egregious that the CSLB referred Ben to the DA for prosecution. Ben now has criminal charges pending.
Ben was able to get another license under the name Moonlight Construction. By now you should not be shocked to hear that Moonlight got in trouble with the CSLB with this license and were disciplined.
Ben was able to get yet ANOTHER license (confusingly under the same name, Welbilt) and he has been disciplined more than once under this license.
Welbilt owes money to a lot of people: to this company for factoring receivables which they then stopped paying back, another company where they factored receivables and again stopped paying, a subcontractor and others.
They get sued. A lot.
They get in trouble with the IRS and the Franchise Tax Board for not paying taxes quite a bit. Moran has a new IRS case filed in 2023 (case #: 801294/2023 for $64,500) and an FTB case filed in 2020 (case #: 1155100, for $11,500). Hey Moran, have you sent the IRS the money you owe them yet? It is accumulating interest at 8%.
FINALLY! The CSLB has referred Ben and Moe to the local DA to file criminal charges for their "work" during their time at Welbilt. This is good news for consumers. Link to the CSLB website here.
On Wednesday, June 26th 2024 we survived multiple attempts to hack our email account, our Facebook account and this website. All were unsuccessful. Clearly this website bothers Ben Hunter and Moe Elkarif. In fact, it bothers them so much they hired an SEO expert to try and help them get around or eliminate the bad publicity. And if that wasn't enough they tried to take down the website by deploying a DDoS attack. However, we deployed Cloudflare and despite repeated attacks, we have managed to stay online.
They have now formed a new venture, called "West Coast Builders 2". Because Ben and Moran cannot be on the license, they found a guy named JORGE ENRIQUE CIFUENTES to be the "CEO". The actual holder of the license, which is the RMO or the responsible managing officer is Melvin Dane Phillips of Calabasas. He is 87. Phillips is supposed to be on every job site, involved in every job. I can tell you right now that he is not.
If that is not enough reasons NOT to use West Coast Builders 2, you are welcome to keep poking around the website to learn more.
Why did we put up this website?
We are a group of consumers dedicated to exposing the deceptive practices of West Coast Builders 2 in Southern California. We have all had verifiable interactions with this company. There is no vendetta. We do not wish for revenge. We are only concerned with publishing our real experiences with West Coast Builders 2 and their owners, Ben Hunter/Ben Halifi aka "Archie" and Moran Elkarif/Moe Elkarif aka "Morgan" so that others are not defrauded as we were.