The Smiling Painter

The Smiling Painter and its owner are a nightmare to deal with. He has taken our $3000+ deposit and keys, has not shown up at all and also failed to return either despite promising to.
Read on for the full description: We hired him to paint our cabinets and tiles in our new place before we move in. In person he has been super friendly and made lots of commitments. Once he had our $3114 deposit and keys, he no-showed every single day of the 3 days he was supposed to do the work, making up truly ridiculous excuses after us chasing him with multiple emails, whatsapps, texts and phone calls every day. This included even the day he was supposed to bring us samples as per our contract, telling us he can't show up 1/2 hour before our appointment and then arriving the next rescheduled day with no samples at all saying he had to "take public transit". After not appearing at all during the duration of the job, he then promised to start the job, making big promises about making good on the contract and even wrote us a declaration that he would show up and "finish the job within 3 days" and then pretended to us that he was on the way to our place with another painter "just hitting a bit of traffic" and then no-showed again. We chased him for another 3 days, this time in the middle of packing and moving, retaining a lawyer and letting him know that if he did not return our deposit and keys, we would be suing him and leaving public reviews of our experience. He then wrote us an email saying he was disappointed in himself and would return our deposit and keys but then once again stopped communicating. He also claimed his phone is "unable to receive calls and texts". We gave him 48 hours i.e. till 9AM today to return our deposit and keys, he responded at about 8AM asking if he could Uber the keys over to us, no mention of the $3114 despite all our inquiries. After chasing him with more emails, and whatsapp messages we realize that every single claim he has made has been fabrications. We will be adding the cost of changing the locks and new fob to our claim - so now he owes us about $3425. Stay away from this truly nightmare person.