If you are a fan of home renovations and those ubiquitous Home Renovation and Flipping shows that were so popular a couple of years ago, this is a must read post. The star of “Flip This House”, Sam Leccima of Atlanta, has led a checkered past including losing his real estate license and not selling the homes he said that he did on the show. In fact, according to eyewitnesses, some of the open houses where offer parties were made were wrap parties. And the repairs done were often shoddy and only for the camera, other rooms were left in their original decrepit state.

Remember folks, television is television. These folks only show you what they want you to see, and what you do not see is the reality. Scam artists like Sam Leccima will get their rewards. Doug Quance was on this story back in October of 2006 and has the low down in these posts.

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 linchpin of the show — were actually quick or temporary patch jobs designed to look good on camera.

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 But Leccima doesn’t have a real estate license — it was revoked by the Georgia Real Estate Commission in 2005, with the panel ruling he “does not bear a good reputation for honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, and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. via FOXNews.com

Some more links on the show “Flip This House” and Sam Leccima:

• Flip This Lawsuit (comments are very interesting) Full site with lots of updates.
• The Real Life Real Estate Blog
• Fox Atlanta I – Team Investigation and Part 2

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