As the saying goes, home is where the heart is. But, it’s also where the money is, as a house is likely to be the most expensive thing that a person will buy during their lifetime. Getting yourself into a home that’s just right can be a massive task, which is why so many of us love to dive into one (or more) of the many popular real estate and home renovation shows on HGTV (like the supposedly fake House Hunters). Unfortunately, a former network star has now been given jail time for real estate and financial fraud, and we know how he used his show for the crimes.
What Former HGTV Star Was Given Jail Time For Real Estate And Financial Fraud?
If you watch a lot of HGTV then you know that while the network is populated with massive hits like Home Town with Ben and Erin Napier, any show from the Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, and the many series of former Flip or Flop star Christina Hall. We love to watch pretty much all of them, but among all of that buying, renovating and selling, sometimes the hosts get into a bit of trouble. Though the most notable example of this is probably everything that went down with the many lawsuits filed against the hosts of Windy City Rehab, Charles “Todd” Hill, a star of the one-season renovation competition, Flip It to Win It, was just sentenced to four years in jail.
The District Attorney’s office for the county of Santa Clara, California (which includes the area known as Silicon Valley), revealed in April 2024 that Hill was given his jail time (along with being ordered to pay restitution to the tune of $9,402,678.43 and serving 10 years of probation) for a variety of real estate and financial fraud crimes against 11 victims, some of which stem from work he did while on the HGTV show. For those who don’t remember the contest, the 2014 program featured teams competing to buy run down homes, fix them up and then sell them, with the team that came away with the largest profit winning in the end.
According to the DA’s office, instead of buying relatively cheap house that were in shambles and fixing them up, Hill spent millions on homes that were already partially renovated but had gone over budget, laundered the money he made from selling those homes and then “pocketed millions in fraudulently obtained money.”
While Hill used his appearance on Flip It to Win It for his criminal activities, it turns out that all he did was use the show to further a number of schemes that had begun far earlier. Some of his deeds include starting a Ponzi scheme, where he used an investor’s home purchasing funds to “live lavishly,” and made up fake balance sheets to hide his crime, along with getting loans with the falsified details.
He also took money that was supposed to be for construction and used it for himself, and yet another case saw an investor look into a home Hill was supposed to be remodeling, only to find “a burnt down shell with no work done on it” and their $250,000 investment gone.
We’ve certainly heard that some HGTV hosts can have very bad experiences working with the network, but it sounds like Hill’s trouble was largely self-inflicted and started before he was even cast on his show. After an investigation, he was indicted in November 2019, and in September 2023 he took a plea deal to accept the grand theft charges against all of the known victims, and also admitted to “aggravated white-collar enhancements.”
It’s always sad when we find out that someone has taken advantage of people, and this case is no different. At least Hill has been stopped, and, hopefully, learned his lesson and won’t attempt committing known crimes again.
