Posted on June 1st, 2007 at 3:48 pm by Editor
On an episode of A&E’s popular reality series Flip This House, Atlanta businessman Sam Leccima sits in front of a run-down house and calls buying and selling real estate his passion. Now authorities and legal filings claim that Leccima’s true passion was a series of scams that included faking the home renovations shown on the cable TV show and claiming to have sold houses he never owned. “This is, indeed, a con artist,” said Sonya McGee, who says Leccima took $4,000 from her in an investment scheme. McGee and others say Leccima’s episodes of Flip This House, A&E’s most popular show, were elaborate hoaxes. His friends and family were presented as potential homebuyers and “sold” signs were slapped in front of unsold houses. They say the home repairs — the lynchpin of the show — were actually quick or temporary patch jobs designed to look good on camera.
Leccima says he never claimed to own the homes. While not acknowledging his televised renovations were staged, he didn’t deny it and suggested that A&E and Departure Films, the production company that makes the show, knew exactly what he was doing. When it recently learned of the claims against Leccima, the cable network pulled reruns of his episodes off the air and wiped his mentions from its Web site. Leccima, 36, presented himself as a successful real estate investor during the 2006 season of the cable show, which depicted him buying, refurbishing and reselling Atlanta-area homes for profits of $77,000 and more. But Leccima doesn’t have a real estate license — it was revoked by the Georgia Real Estate Commission in 2005, with the panel ruling he “does not bear a good reputation for honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, and competence.” Now he’s under investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office for securities fraud.
Atlanta-area real estate records show Leccima never owned several of the homes he’s been shown fixing up on television. WAGA-TV in Atlanta, which first aired the claims against Leccima, has shown footage from inside one of the homes, which had mismatched wooden floors and unpainted patched walls that were out of the view of TV cameras on Flip This House.
McGee said she attended what was billed as a wrap party at one home. But when the party was shown on “Flip This House,” it was presented as an open house at which someone expresses interest in buying the property. McGee said appearing on the TV show made it easier for Leccima to find such investors: “As soon as that first episode aired, he got phone calls from people saying, ‘I love you. Where can I send you some money?’”
This is what A&E canned Richard Davis and Trademark Properties for . . . an alleged con-man? Now Richard is and Trademark are featured weekly on TLC’s The Real Deal which airs Saturday nights with repeates on Sundays. This also isn’t the first time their have been allegations that Flip This House is staged. One of the other flippers, the Montelongo’s were rumored to have hired actors for their flips as well as not actually making the renevations. I enjoy the Montelongo’s shows but the other flip teams are terrible. A&E looks to have two new flip teams for this season, but none of them can live up to Trademark. TLC’s The Real Deal is a great show that is was Flip This House was and should be.
7 Comments »
I am a huge fan Richard Davis and Trademark. I always look forward to watching their show even when it was on A & E channel. I watch TLC all weekend when I am not working. I often kid with my husband that I would like the opportunity to work with Trademark.
Richard Davis and his team are awesome! He seems to treat people with the utmost respect even when they might not deserve it (i.e. the episode where the guys stiffs Trademark on rent). Winner winner, Chicken Dinner, Richard. Kudos!
My wife and children like to watch these real estate flipping shows, and when I watch I sit and debunk what is shown to be happening as to what would happen in real life. (No permits, little to no inspections, tons of shoddy workmanship, etc.)
Scammers are in every industry and the real estate industry is no exception. We have robbers that cheat people out of their equity for a quick sale - you’ve probably seen these guys selling their techniques at 3am, this is NOT what Richard is about – 180 degrees.
From my view point Richard Davis is the closest thing to the ‘Real Deal’ that has been on and the new show ‘The Real Estate Pros’ on TLC is the only show worth watching unless you really like fiction.
What Trademark Properties and Richard Davis does isn’t simple or easy folks, I’ll bet even he has made mistakes too. My advice is don’t try this at home – or don’t gamble what you can’t afford to loose. The difference is Richard has done so much work investigating any property he buys he ‘knows’ what the outcome will be before he writes any check.
Richard’s site is trademark-properties.com/ - sign up for his newsletter.
Much like Richard – I have done residential real estate appraisal, have been a licensed general building contractor, I am a licensed Home Inspector and Real Estate Broker so I leave it to you to decide if I should know enough to spot a phony – and with that all I can add is Go Richard ..Go!
In response to the first comment, who the heck are “the true Southern real people”? Huh? There are plenty of brains and integrity all over the country (and the world, for that matter). Strange comment…
I love Richard’s show, but I am getting a bit nervous that this may all be going to his head. I hope I am wrong!
I was really touched at Richard Davis leasing a home back to the original owners. I’m in a bad situation at the moment and just seeing someone care about that family brought the tears. Richard has a big heart (there are few professionals that have that). Thanks for listening , Carolyn Owens
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed.
June 9, 2007 at 5:43 pm
I agree that both the Atlanta company and the Texas company have done nothing to compare to Richard Davis and Trademark.
No one will ever compare to the true Southern real people who know real estate like no other. I am glad the other shows were removed. I am an avid fan of Trademark and will always be.