The First Red Flag Was a Story About Getting Something for Free

In 2003, Greg Digneo and his college friend Matt decided to start a solar-panel installation company. They were young, inexperienced, and excited to discover that a single job could bring in $10,000 or more—an enormous amount of money to two college students.

Their first two clients were professors. Then came their third customer.

The house was beautiful. The roof was perfect. The job looked like exactly the kind of opportunity they wanted.

But during their first meeting, the client casually mentioned that the specialized paint on his garage floor had been free because he had sued the company that installed it.

At the time, Greg and Matt laughed it off.

Looking back, Greg knows they should have walked away.

The problem wasn’t simply that the man had sued someone. There are legitimate reasons to take legal action. The problem was that he bragged about it to a prospective service provider on their very first meeting.

That distinction turned out to be critical.

Then They Started Finding Evidence That His Stories Didn’t Add Up

The garage-floor story wasn’t the only strange thing.

The client also showed Greg and Matt photographs he claimed to have taken himself, including one supposedly taken in Norway that Greg immediately recognized as a famous image he’d seen before.

They searched the man’s name online and found the same image, along with a message indicating that the image was copyrighted and that legal action would follow if it were used.

Another red flag.

But they were already in the middle of the project and had already been paid. They didn’t know what they could realistically do besides return the money and get stuck with the solar-panel inventory.

So they finished the job.

And that’s when the real nightmare began.

The Client Who Wouldn’t Go Away

Most solar-panel installations end when the work is complete. Maybe a client calls with a question or asks for some maintenance.

This client was different.

For roughly four years, Greg and Matt heard from him about once a week.

His complaints were often minor—sometimes a leaf on a solar panel—but his calls came with the same underlying threat.

He would tell Matt, “I don’t want to have to put on my lawyer hat,” implying that legal action was just around the corner.

At first, Greg and Matt responded every time.

Eventually, they stopped.

After a few years, they reached the point where their attitude was essentially: Fine. Sue us.

The calls became less frequent over the years, but they never completely stopped.

Sometimes, years later, the man would call while drunk, launching into incoherent rambles.

Then, sometime around 2015 or 2016, Greg and Matt wondered whatever had happened to him.

They Googled him.

And discovered that he’d been arrested for impersonating a police officer.

Seventeen Years Later, the Story Still Wasn’t Over

You might think that would be the end.

It wasn’t.

In 2020, roughly 17 years after the original installation, the client contacted Matt because he wanted the solar panels removed.

That part was perfectly normal.

What wasn’t normal was his request that Matt damage the panels while removing them.

Matt refused.

And given the client’s history, he documented everything instead.

He photographed every panel as it was placed on the ground, making sure there would be a record of the condition of the equipment when it left the roof.

That turned out to be an important lesson: once you know you’re dealing with someone who may create problems later, documentation isn’t paranoia. It’s protection.

People Show You Who They Are

The biggest lesson Greg took from the experience was about client character.

If someone repeatedly talks about suing vendors, service providers, or other people—and especially if they’re bragging about how they got something for free through a lawsuit—that tells you something.

It’s not necessarily about whether their previous dispute was legitimate.

It’s about how they think about relationships.

As Greg put it, if threatening and suing people seems to be part of someone’s identity, eventually you may become the next target.

And there’s another important piece: people don’t necessarily change.

Twenty years later, this client was still engaging in the same kinds of behavior Greg and Matt had seen at the beginning.

The red flags weren’t isolated incidents.

They were a preview.

Put an End to the Work in Writing

The experience also changed the way Greg structured his contracts.

When they first started the solar business, Greg and Matt hadn’t included what Greg calls the “finality of work.”

They assumed that once the job was finished, it was finished.

Their nightmare client taught them that assumption wasn’t enough.

They eventually made the end of their responsibility explicit: once the work was completed, inspected, accepted, and performing according to the agreed expectations, their responsibility ended unless the client separately hired them for additional service.

It’s a subtle provision that can be easy to overlook when you’re starting out.

But after spending years dealing with a client who refused to accept that the original job was over, Greg understood exactly why it mattered.

And When You See the Pattern, Document Everything

Matt’s response to the final request in 2020 showed just how much they had learned.

He wasn’t going to damage the panels.

He wasn’t going to rely on a verbal agreement.

He wasn’t going to assume everything would be fine afterward.

He photographed every panel, placed them carefully on pallets, and covered them with a tarp.

Once you’ve identified a client as particularly difficult or potentially dishonest, Greg’s experience suggests that it’s worth becoming much more deliberate about creating a record of your work.

Because the goal isn’t to win an argument later.

It’s to make sure there isn’t an argument about what happened.

The Lesson: Don’t Let the Money Override the Red Flags

Greg and Matt were young when they took on this client. The money was exciting, the house looked perfect, and they didn’t yet have the experience to recognize what those early warning signs meant.

But the strangest part of the story is that the warning signs were there almost immediately.

He bragged about suing another service provider.

He told stories that didn’t add up.

He repeatedly threatened legal action.

He crossed professional boundaries.

He eventually tried to get the solar panels damaged.

And despite all of that, Greg and Matt kept dealing with him for years.

The lesson isn’t that every strange client is going to get arrested for impersonating a police officer.

It’s simpler than that:

When a client shows you who they are, believe them.

And when the red flags start appearing before you’ve even finished the first job, sometimes the smartest business decision is to walk away—no matter how good the money looks.