'Flip This House' star accused of fraud

'Flip This House' star accused of fraud

ATLANTA - 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, an Atlanta pharmaceutical representative 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.

"Ask anybody who works in television how a reality show is made and you'll find that ours was a very typical approach," Leccima said in a telephone interview.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070601/ap_en_tv/house_flipper_investigation

I do know at least one "reality" show that isn't what it appears. I know a couple who appeared on the popular "House Hunters" show, in which prosepctive buyers supposedly look at three houses before deciding which they like best and making an offer on it. The offer is inevitably accepted and the happy couple is shown in their newly purchased home a few months later. In the case of my friends, they bought the home before they filmed the show. On camera they only pretended to be looking at the home for the first time. Then they were taken to two other homes which were for sale and had to pretend that they were interested, even though their purchase of the first place was already a done deal. They laughingly called the two other houses "shill" houses, because they were never in contention.

They went along with what the producers wanted because they thought it would be fun to be on tv. They did actually buy one of the houses, so that much is for real. But the "house hunt" as depicted in their case was bogus.

and say that he had sex with his sister. I didn't know that TV shows could be prosecuted for fraud - watch out 'Fox News'

Saw one of them where the flipper never even got permits. Then when the county or city told them to stop work - they kept working until they were shut down again! A real arrogant SOB.

They are all a bunch of jerks if you ask me. They are just jacking up home prices for making tacky repairs to dumps.

Richard Davis from Trademark Properties