A 58-year-old California man who appeared on the HGTV home improvement competition series has been convicted of real estate fraud and sentenced to four years in prison, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Charles “Todd” Hill was also ordered to pay $9.4 million in restitution, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office announced in a news release.
Hill was indicted in 2019 and convicted last September of committing “multiple fraud schemes” after pleading guilty to “grand theft and aggravated white collar crimes against all victims,” according to prosecutors.
“Some people see the huge amounts of money flowing into Silicon Valley real estate as a business opportunity,” said District Attorney Jeff Rosen. “Unfortunately, some see it as an opportunity to commit crimes, and we intend to hold them strictly accountable.”
More than a decade ago, Hill appeared on just one season of “Flip It to Win It,” described on the HGTV website as a “high-stakes hour” in which “experienced real estate agents bid on abandoned homes without ever seeing them” as they tried to get them on the market. According to the Mercury News, Hill was the show's “Mr. Flip It,” and was described in a 2014 article as an “energetic, charismatic developer.”
That year, just months after “Flip It to Win It” aired, Hill was sued by a former top investor who accused the Los Gatos native of not paying for renovations. Max Keach, who once funded more than 90 percent of Hill's real estate flipping business, claimed in a civil lawsuit that Hill took “money for work that was never performed” and falsified books to pocket the profits, The Post reported.
“It was a huge mistake not to look over his shoulder,” Keach told the News at the time. “He became a celebrity on my dime. We started this before there was a TV show.”
Hill denied the allegations, but the allegations prompted his former partners in Flip It To Win It to denounce him and cut ties with him. It was unclear as of Tuesday whether Keach's lawsuit was ongoing. Hill's lawyers said in 2014 that they expected the matter would be resolved in private arbitration.
The reality TV star was arrested in early 2018 following a criminal fraud investigation by the District Attorney's Office, according to reports at the time.
“He is suspected of taking more than $200,000 from each of the four victims,” then-Santa Clara District Attorney Christine Garcia Senn said after his arrest. “So the aggravated white collar crime charge basically means that there is a pattern of crime that involves the taking of more than $500,000.”
Garcia Senn explained that between March 2013 and July 2014, Hill ran a “business purchasing homes for profit and hiring contractors to renovate them.”
“He was losing money and began manipulating the books to make it look like he was making a profit. He then set up new companies and moved assets from other companies to attract new investors,” the Mercury News reported.
As Hill's trial progresses, prosecutors announced Tuesday they have found a total of 11 victims who fell prey to his schemes, including at least one Ponzi scheme, in which Hill “embezzled investors' funds budgeted for home purchases and used them to fund a lavish lifestyle.” To cover up his thefts, Hill created false balance sheets and obtained loans using false information, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Hill laundered his ill-gotten gains and spent them on “a rental apartment in San Francisco, as well as hotels, vacations and luxury cars.”
Hill was immediately taken into custody after several victims testified at Tuesday's sentencing hearing that they are still “suffering financial and professional harm,” according to prosecutors.
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