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One of HomeVestors of America\u2019s residential investment properties is on Marjorie Avenue in South Dallas.<\/p>\n
HomeVestors<\/p>\n
For years, Charles Carrier \u2014 operating as a franchisee of HomeVestors known for its ubiquitous \u201cWe Buy Ugly Houses\u201d slogan \u2014 lured investors to his Dallas house flipping business by promising solid fixed returns and the safety of secured priority liens. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In reality, according to federal prosecutors, Carrier was operating a scheme that bilked dozens of people out of nearly $40 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced the 67-year-old North Texas resident to more than 15 years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $24 million in restitution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cCarrier didn\u2019t just target investors; he preyed on Main Street families, retirees and small business owners through a sham \u2018We Buy Ugly Houses\u2019 scam,\u201d U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Ryan Raybould said in a statement. \u201cThrough his lies and deceit, Carrier earned every month of his 15-year sentence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News on Thursday, Tom Pappas, Carrier\u2019s lawyer, said his client is deeply remorseful and has been prepared to serve a prison sentence. Pappas also characterized Carrier\u2019s criminal actions as a yearslong attempt to turn around his flagging home-flipping business once the economy went south. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe regrets every single criminal act he did trying to recoup money for investors,\u201d Pappas said. \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is he didn\u2019t seek riches for himself. He didn\u2019t profit off this. He didn\u2019t have a bank account in the Cayman Islands.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carrier pleaded guilty to wire fraud in late 2025. \u201cWhen this thing finally stopped, it was completely driven by me saying ‘enough’ and going to the people and saying, ‘Here’s the mess I’ve created,'” the businessman previously told ProPublica, which published an investigation of the alleged scheme last year. \u201cThis is a mess created by me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carrier, a Wharton School graduate who previously worked at Pepsi, began his home-flipping business as a franchise of HomeVestors of America \u2014 the Dallas-based \u201cWe Buy Ugly Houses\u201d corporate powerhouse \u2014 around two decades ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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For years, while relying on loans from institutional investors, he was successful. He led training sessions for other franchisees and even claimed to be \u201cthe largest and most successful HomeVestors franchise in the United States,\u201d ProPublica reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Carrier eventually turned to individual lenders, and around 2018 began orchestrating what amounted to a major fraud scheme, according\u00a0to investigators. To entice investors, he promised \u201cfirst-position\u201d liens against properties that were secured by deeds and provided what appeared to be valid lien documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also promised returns of between 8% and 10%, and initially did make payments to his small lenders. But those payments eventually stopped and prosecutors later alleged that Carrier had frequently failed to record the deeds to the properties investors had purportedly bought into, which meant their investments were unsecured.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSecond, even where Carrier provided investors with what appeared to be valid lien documents, he had already encumbered the same property with other liens and additional deeds of trust \u2014 without disclosing this to investors,\u201d prosecutors alleged.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carrier also sold off properties without repaying investors, used forged documents and spent money investors thought was going into rehabbing houses on unrelated business expenses and personal credit cards as well as payments to earlier investors, according to prosecutors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Ponzi scheme ultimately swindled more than 80 people, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office. Many of the investors were elderly, and some lost millions. The investors also filed various lawsuits, and federal prosecutors brought their case last spring after an FBI investigation. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Pappas said he was unsure if his client might appeal the sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s 68 years old \u2014 he doesn\u2019t want to spend the rest of his life in prison,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he regrets taking shortcuts to try to fix things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of HomeVestors of America\u2019s residential investment properties is on Marjorie Avenue in South Dallas. HomeVestors For years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-449013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449013","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=449013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}