St. Cloud Contractor Permanently Banned From Construction Industry, Ordered to Pay More Than $1 Million

(KNSI) — A St. Cloud contractor accused of taking money from homeowners for renovation work that never happened is now permanently barred from the residential construction industry in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office says it secured a judgment against Ryan Pietron and his company, Affordable Home Remodeling, LLC. The judgment orders the payment of $518,000 in restitution to victims, $518,000 in civil penalties to the state, and $33,000 for the Attorney General’s Office’s costs and attorney’s fees.

The office sued Pietron and his company in October of 2025. The state says Pietron collected tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, of dollars from homeowners for work that was never done. Investigators located dozens of families who lost a combined $518,000. That is well above the nearly $400,000 the state estimated when the lawsuit was filed.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, Pietron issued fake progress updates to get more payments out of homeowners. In one case, he forged an invoice from a real supplier claiming he had placed an order that did not exist. The state says he typically did token demolition work, or none at all, before disappearing with the money. Some victims tracked him down and got a promise of a refund, which the state says he broke.

Pietron was never licensed, and the state Department of Labor and Industry had banned him from claiming to be a licensed contractor. The state says he told customers he was licensed anyway. Because the business was unlicensed, victims cannot recover money through the state’s Contractor Recovery Fund.

Pietron also recently pleaded guilty to felony theft for some of the same conduct in a separate criminal case brought by the office of Wright County Attorney Brian Lutes.

His case was filed alongside a nearly identical scheme run by Earl Christian Rode the Fourth and his company, High Road Builders, LLC. In January, the Attorney General’s Office won a $2.6 million judgment against Rode that permanently bans him from the industry. Another contractor, Charles Ray Workman of MN Crete Pools, LLC, was recently sentenced to five years in federal prison for his scheme.

The Attorney General’s Office encourages homeowners to check contractors online, get information in writing, and review all documents before signing. The Department of Labor and Industry has a free license look-up tool on its website. Not all contractors are required to have a state license, including most specialty contractors who provide only one skill.

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