Ex-HGTV Star Must Pay $10 Million for Real Estate Fraud
A former HGTV star is headed to the big house. Charles “Todd” Hill, of Los Gatos, Calif., has been sentenced to four years in jail for real estate and financial fraud. The former star of Flip It to Win It must also pay nearly $10 million in restitution to 11 victims, the Santa Clara County District Attorney said.
What did Charles “Todd” Hill do?
In September 2023, Hill, 58, was convicted of grand theft with aggravated white-collar enhancements. On April 16, he was sentenced to four years in jail. He was also ordered to pay $9.4 million in restitution and will serve 10 years on probation.
Hill was indicted in November 2019 after an investigation uncovered evidence of fraud, including scams that predated his time on HGTV. Among his crimes were diverting construction money for personal use. He also ran a Ponzi scheme where he took money investors gave him to buy homes and used it to fund a lavish lifestyle, including an apartment in San Francisco, hotels, vacations, and luxury cars. He hid the theft with fake balance sheets and fraudulently obtained loans.
One investor gave Hill $250,000 to remodel a home. But when he toured the property, he found it was a burnt-out shell and no work had been completed.
Hill’s victims who testified at the sentencing hearing said they were still suffering financial and professional damages from the fraud.
“Some see the huge amount of money in Silicon Valley real estate as a business opportunity,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “Others, unfortunately, see it as a criminal opportunity – and we will hold those people strictly accountable.”
Hill starred in HGTV’s ‘Flip It to Win It’
Hill starred in the short-lived HGTV house-flipping series Flip It to Win It, which aired for one season in 2014. It featured “five teams of expert flippers” who “bid against each other for abandoned houses sight unseen,” according to HGTV’s website.
“It’s a high-stakes hour in which three auctions are won, three houses are renovated and then all three houses go on the market for top dollar,” the description continues.
The show highlighted Hill’s business of buying run-down homes, fixing them up, and then selling them for a profit. But according to prosecutors, viewers weren’t getting the whole story. In reality, Hill spent millions on overbudget remodels, laundered profits, and pocketed millions in fraudulently obtained money.
At one point, Hill seemed to be poised to become a prominent HGTV personality. But his TV career fizzled out soon after Flip It to Win It debuted. In 2014, Max Keech, one of Hill’s investors, sued Hill, accusing him of scamming him out of $6 million. HGTV quickly scuttled plans for a second show that would have featured Hill called Think You Can Flip?, The Mercury News reported at the time.
“I am a very bad judge of character,” Keech told the paper. “I made a critical mistake in not looking over his shoulder. My money made him a celebrity. We started this before there was a TV show. He had the personality to do it.”
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