An Alabama pool installer owes three dozen customers $1.4 million after signing contracts but failing to complete the jobs.

In a bankruptcy motion filed last fall, Pristine Fiberglass Pools and owner Greg Kirk lists 33 creditors.

Now he’s facing lawsuits from some of those customers, and the Alabama Attorney General is prosecuting Kirk on criminal theft and fraud connected to two incomplete pool jobs in Madison Most of his customers are in northern Alabama, in and around Huntsville. They each paid an average of $50,000 for nothing more than a hole in their backyards.

Chaz Buchanan and his family are among those customers.

When the family decided to put in a pool, they did a little research and decided to use a contractor who was putting in a pool for another family nearby.

“He was very professional, very nice,” Buchanan said. “Gentle individual. This guy seems to be a pretty good guy and I said, ‘hey, I think we've found our pool guy.’” Now, both families are out more than $50,000 with little more than a hole in the backyard to show for it.

Eight months later, Buchanan’s fiberglass pool shell hadn’t arrived, so he cancelled the contract and demanded a refund.

He’s still waiting for that as well.

He’s among those who has filed a lawsuit, citing breach of contract and fraud.

Ultimately, the Buchanans opted to fill in their hole, because paying someone else to finish the job was too expensive.

“Not with the prices the way things are nowadays,” Buchanan said.

Their only hopes are to get their money back and make sure no one else has the same experience.