A resurfaced clip of Nicole Curtis using a racial slur cost her HGTV’s Rehab Addict, but former host Charles Todd Hill lost Flip It to Win It — and his freedom — after a 2019 fraud indictment.
The 2013 series followed five teams of house flippers who bid against each other for sight-unseen abandoned homes. But off-camera, Hill, a former house flipper, was running a real estate scam where he convinced real estate investors to fund home-flipping projects, but instead diverted much of the money for personal use.
Prosecutors said Hill controlled the company’s finances, falsified balance sheets, and obtained loans using misleading financial information. Rather than spending investor funds on renovating properties as promised, authorities alleged he used the money on luxury cars, vacations, and personal expenses, disguising those purchases as construction costs in company records.
Approximately 18 homes were involved, with at least 11 homeowners left with completely unfinished or partially finished homes, forcing them to take over contracting themselves. Prosecutor Oanh Tran said the impact of Hill’s scam was tectonic. “Businesses were shut down, one victim lost his home, so the consequences of his fraud are far reaching that cover various aspects of life that these victims are still dealing with,” he told a local ABC news station.
Hill was ultimately convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay approxoimately $10 million for real estate and financial fraud.
Flip It to Win It contestant Beau Eckstein said he had positive interactions with Hill while on the show, but revealed that the series wasn’t a truly realistic view of the house-flipping business. “I think the TV channels always show, like everybody’s making 150K profit – have you ever stopped and said well, there’s no interest, there’s no real estate commissions involved – like what you’re forecasting is not actually reality,” he said.
Curtis’ Rehab Addict had recently returned to HGTV but was pulled when a clip surfaced online of her saying a racial slur on-camera, but then asked producers to delete it. Curtis has since apologized, admitting she knew it was wrong and vowing it would never happen again.
