Chris and Raquel Judge made $4.8 million from renovation projects that were never completed, saving some clients more than six figures.
Chip and Joanna Gaines have been at the top of the design world for more than 20 years, but only a handful of home buyers get the Magnolia treatment on their hit show “Fixer Upper.” So when a young Texas couple, Chris and Raquel Judge, started promising homebuyers a “Chip and Joanna Gaines feel” at an affordable price, it was hard to resist the offer.
However, the judge decided on shoddy and dangerous renovation work.
“They really marketed themselves as having a ‘Chip and Joanna Gaines’ feel,” homeowner Lane Simmons told ABC 11. Simmons and his wife paid the couple $200,000 to renovate their home. “Everything they did to my house was wrong. I had a friend of the family who is also a contractor come and look at everything and he said, ‘A lot of this is dangerous. It’s probably like the worst job I’ve ever seen.'”
“Everything they’ve done to my house is wrong. Within a few weeks, the tiles are cracking, the floors are cracking, the kitchen floor is sinking in. The exterior trim looks like it was done by a child. All the framing had to be ripped out and rebuilt. The stairs had to be torn out and rebuilt. It’s only supported by a single board on the inside. But it’s code violation after code violation,” he added.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas described the fraud in public documents, saying the judges signed 40 contracts worth $4.8 million between August 2020 and January 2023. The couple attracted clients with below-market bids for custom construction, architecture, and interior design/decorating services, and claimed that Chris was a licensed architect.
The judge will require an initial payment to start the project and subsequent installments as the project progresses, but will not complete the services.
The couple depleted their funds and spent $865,000 on personal expenses, including $10,000 on plastic surgery and $82,000 on Amazon purchases, according to federal records.
“He just left,” homeowner Christine Newman told WFAA in Dallas. “He stopped talking to us. He never came back.”
“This is not just a bad business decision or ‘I don’t know how to build a house,'” Newman said, noting that she paid the judge a total of $400,000 to $200,000 and another $200,000 to correct the judge’s mistakes. “This is – he chose to lie. He chose to steal. And Rachel chose to lie and steal with him.”
Judge Chris pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which could result in up to 20 years in federal prison. Meanwhile, Judge Raquel pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. They also face financial penalties, restitution and conditions of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The couple will be sentenced within the next four months.
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