A Tennessee pool builder, Randy Westerbeck, owner of Westco Contractors LLC, defended himself in a Maury County courtroom against multiple felony theft charges.

More than 40 people have accused the contractor of taking money for swimming pools that were never completed.

At a hearing that took place on March 28, Westerbeck told Judge David Allen, “The kind of person I am … I would never be involved in what I am charged with.”

Gene Hynok is among those who are accusing the mid-state contractor of theft. It has been nearly two years since Hynok spent his life savings on a pool that didn’t get completed. He doesn’t expect to ever see that money again, and he can’t imagine how the job will ever get finished.

“It is going to be very difficult to trust people in the future,” Hynok said.

Jon Allen is in a similar situation. “Welcome to my nightmare,” Allen said. “I never could have imagined this.”

Last summer, Westerbeck filed for bankruptcy and told reporters that he had only realized that his business had taken a turn for the worse around that time.

Blaming employee issues, supply chain problems, and extreme increases in costs, Westerbeck said at that time, “We have been struggling ever since we started, but to really understand and realize things were not going to work out was just recently in the last few weeks.”

In a June 2023 letter to his customers he wrote, “Contracts were honored at the prices agreed but much higher costs made many projects a large loss. We did not leave provision in the contracts for higher costs and I tried to honor the contracts as they were because we thought if we just kept going it would work out. It has not.” He was arrested in mid-March and booked in the Lawrence County Jail and is facing felony charges in Maury, Wayne, and Lawrence counties.

Hynok said that the arrests have given some of his customers a sense of closure.

“The people saw,” Hynok said. “The justice system saw, so they are going to take action.”

At the March 28 hearing, Judge Allen appointed Westerbeck a public defender in the case.

Westerbeck told the judge, “We had a failed business and ended up filing for bankruptcy which these charges stem from.”