In my situation, it just so happened the fact that aviation is a small community worked to the pencil-whipping mechanic's disadvantage. You see, there is a pilot at my home airport, HNB, who used to take several planes to this mechanic based at GEZ to have him do his annuals (Bonanza, 182, 172). At the time I was taking my plane to DCY for my annuals, which is just a short 30 min hop away. This pilot would drop in from time-to-time and chat with my mechanic. He just so happened to drop in while my plane was in its first annual, and knowing I was a new pilot and a first time owner, asked Eric about it, as he was genuinely concerned I'd bought a piece of junk and wouldn't realize how unsafe it was.

Once Eric showed him everything that was wrong, and he agreed with Eric these things had been this way for quite a while, and he saw the signed off annual in my logbook, he was furious. When he saw how the mechanic, HIS mechanic, had basically screwed me over, he pulled all his business from him. That, to me, was justice served, and more than the FAA would have likely done had I tried to seek some sort of legal or regulatory victory.

States I landed in N63420 while he was mine:
[Linked Image from visitedstatesmap.com]
KDCY

"Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle. It's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes." - Captain Rex Kramer