Adam Carolla caught a contractor, and so did authorities, and now 66-year-old Myron Barker of Irvine must report to Orange County Jail by Jan. 16 to serve a 190-day sentence.
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Judy and Dave Wislocki contacted the producers of Spike TV's Catch a Contractor, which has Carolla, licensed builder Skip Bedell and Bedell's private investigator wife Alison target residential contractors over shoddy work. As listeners to Carolla's hugely popular podcasts know, before he teamed up with Jimmy Kimmel and later Dr. Drew Pinsky on KROQ and co-hosted Comedy Central's The Man Show with Kimmel, he was a carpenter and home builder.
The Wislockis called the reality show to say they had paid Barker $22,000 for a kitchen remodel in their Irvine home that was not done to their satisfaction nor completed. After confronting someone like Barker, the show gives the contractor three options: complete the job correctly under the supervision of a licensed builder, give the homeowners their money back or walk away in which case the producers will help the homeowners file a civil action against the contractor.
In the Catch a Contractor episode that premiered in the spring, Barker agreed on camera to help finish the job but then he left again–not only still with the Wislocki's money but a Spike TV appearance fee. The show wound up completing the job and giving the couple their dream kitchen. Finally.
But, unfortunately for Barker, the Wislockis contacted the state's contractor license board, which discovered Barker not only had no contractor's license but he'd been busted for it before. So they had him hauled into an Orange County courtroom, where Barker copped to operating without a contractor's license and received the jail time earlier this month. Of his 190-day sentence, he must do at least 95 days, according to prosecutors.
Barker was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to the victims. You really can't find good help these day.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.