Josip Sep (aka Joe Sep) was born in Vinkovci, Croatia on December 31, 1983. He found his way to Canada several years ago and began working in the trades and then as a general contractor. He is very well known for his ability to make anybody like him at first but even more renowned for his deceit, lies, manipulation, malpractice, theft, and stiffing his employees and sub-trades after the jobs get done. Fuelling his addictions to hard drugs and gambling there is no telling how far he will go to get the next dollar.
Fast forward a few years and Joe has now stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from innocent home owners and tradespeople. He operated for a few years in Winnipeg under the business name SEP-TJE Construction but always took payments from clients in his personal name and used the company as a front of legitimacy.
After burning his reputation in Winnipeg and racking up six lawsuits against him, he left in February of 2023 and fled to Calgary to look for a fresh market. Joe wasted no time with his games making connections in Calgary and finding new victims to damage financially. He was even willing to use abusive and manipulative tactics like declaring a desire to marry one of his targets to try and solidify trust between them. After landing a couple of big jobs in Calgary and Airdrie, he pocketed a lot of money and eventually abandoned the jobs, in one case stealing a lot from the home as well.
Joe obtained a white SUV in Winnipeg just before he left. He never made payments and the vehicle was repossessed in the fall of 2023. Joe continues to live in Calgary with his family as of June 2024. He now simply goes by “Josef” when writing his name to avoid anyone searching his name and finding this website and pretends he has a company named JT Construction when courting new customers.
Joe is a master manipulator and he continues to go around playing his manipulative games and scamming honest people out of their hard-earned money or tricking people into doing work for nothing. For finding workers he often targets immigrants who are not well established in Canada offering them a great wage to work for him and then cuts them off and leaves them without pay.
In one situation a Ukrainian refugee, “Borys” (not his real name), who was new to Canada lost his apartment because Joe was not paying him for the work he was doing, so he ended up living in Joe’s unfinished basement, sleeping on an old sofa. This arrangement was in violation of Joe’s lease, but what was even more ironic was that Joe had scammed his landlord for a huge sum of money based on a promise to renovate that very basement, which never happened. He then lied to the landlord about “Borys” saying he was a worker there to renovate the basement, not someone else living with him.
“Borys” had nowhere to go, so he was forced to continue to work for Joe so he didn’t get kicked out and end up homeless, but he continued to not get paid, so he couldn’t find a new place or a new job. Thankfully a family from a local church helped him relocate temporarily and with the help of myself and a few others he has been able to get back on his feet and find a new job and a new home.
The hope is that with enough exposure and public awareness he will have a much harder time finding new victims. If you are a connected person in the real estate or home renovations industry anywhere in Canada I would encourage you to share this website with as many people as you can and post it inside community forms related to your industry. If you are someone in the media, especially the Calgary area, I would encourage you to take this seriously and warn the public about this menace to society.
If you have any new information to share please reach out through the contact form.
Last updated on June 3, 2024.