pled guilty in December<\/a> to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\nSenior U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means sentenced Christopher Judge to serve 78 months in federal prison to be followed by two years of supervised release, according to a written statement by federal prosecutors. Means ordered Raquelle Judge to serve one month in prison, prosecutors said. Both defendants were ordered to pay $2,794,680.73 in restitution, the statement said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, the couple managed Judge DFW LLC, a Texas-based company that they claimed provided custom architecture, construction and interior design services. From 2020 to 2023, the Judges offered below-market bids to consumers, but after they entered design-and-build contracts, they would not finish the job, federal prosecutors said. They often abandoned the projects, according to the prosecutor’s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The couple also falsely\u00a0claimed Christopher Judge was a licensed architect. They would use victims’ payment to pay for another, unrelated construction project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said there are more than 40 victims across six counties in Texas. The Judges’ scheme led\u00a0to about $4.2 million in losses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said in a statement that the Judges entire business model was “built on lies and deceit.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This kind of brazen fraud strikes at the heart of consumer trust,” he said, “and our office will ensure that those who engage in such criminal conduct face justice.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fort Worth homebuilder was sentenced to serve more than six years in federal prison Tuesday after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,92331,88643,99169],"class_list":["post-423723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-tp-courts","tag-tp-fort-worth","tag-tp-fraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}