Now he's under investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State's office for securities fraud.
Rip This Louse.
Posted on 06/01/2007 4:57:01 PM PDT by george76
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.
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... 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," ...
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 But Leccima doesn't have a real estate license — it was revoked by the Georgia Real Estate Commission in 2005, with the panel ruling he "does not bear a good reputation for honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, and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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Rip This Louse.
That show is a shame. Flip this house was great under trademark, and nobody else; the real deal doesn’t have the same feel.
That show is a shame.
Another infomercial ?
What do you mean?
The profits seemed to come too easily on this tv show.
Flipping a house has much more risk and work than what the show presented. IMO.
It reminded me of expensive classes offered late at night on tv to teach buying a house with ‘no money down’ or ‘bad credit is no problem .’
Here he peddles his real estate book on his website.
http://samleccima.com/main.htm
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