A young Texas couple who posed as licensed contractors allegedly scammed dozens of clients out of nearly $4.8 million, leaving families stuck with half-built, unsafe homes — while the duo splurged the money on personal luxuries, including plastic surgery.
Christopher Judge and his wife, Raquelle Judge, allegedly deceived about 40 clients between August 2020 and January 2023, presenting themselves as aspiring house-flipping stars and reeling in customers through social media — only to reveal themselves as a brazen con-artist duo.
According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, the pair falsely claimed that Christopher was a licensed architect through their company, Judge DFW LLC — leaving behind a trail of unstable, half-finished homes.
Christopher and Raquelle Judge have pleaded guilty to orchestrating a nearly $5 million fraud scheme carried out through their home contracting business.
Lane Simmons and his wife were among the couple’s many victims. Simmons’ wife said the Judges came highly recommended in a local moms’ social media group, and the pair quickly won their trust with an enthusiastic, polished pitch.
“They came out to our house and really pitched themselves as like this Chip and Joanna Gaines type of vibe,” Simmons told WFAA.
But instead of getting a “Fixer Upper”-style dream team, they ended up with nothing more than a pair of glorified handymen for their home renovation.
The Judges left multiple homes unfinished while funneling company money into personal splurges — including $10,000 on plastic surgery and a staggering $82,000 on Amazon purchases. Wfaa
“My house — everything that they did is wrong. Within weeks, my tile is cracking. My floors are cracking. My kitchen floor is sinking in. The exterior trim looks like a child did it. All the framing, we had to re-tear out and rebuild. My staircase had to be re-torn out and rebuilt. It was only held up by one piece of board on the inside. Just code violation after code violation,” Simmons told the outlet.
He said the Judges’ bid to remodel the home came in far below every other estimate they received — a glaring red flag in hindsight.
In all 24 construction projects cited in the fraud case, victims said the Judges lured them in with below-market bids, explaining the cut-rate prices by claiming they were just getting their business off the ground.
Many of the homes the Judges abandoned were left in unsafe, uninhabitable conditions.
Simmons said he paid the Judges more than $200,000 — and still had to spend even more out of his own pocket to fix their shoddy work. He added that the home, as the Judges claimed it was “finished,” was nowhere near safe to live in.
“We had a family friend that’s also a contractor come over and look over everything, and he’s like, ‘Man, there’s a lot of this is unsafe,’” he said. “’This is like the worst job I’ve probably ever seen.’”
Another victim hired the fake “fixer-uppers” to build her dream home from the ground up. But when she started noticing delays, inflated charges, and faulty construction, she confronted the Judges — only for Christopher to vanish.
“He just walked off,” Kristin Newman told WFAA. “He just stopped talking to us. Never came back.”
She told NBC-DFW that she had handed the Judges $200,000 — only to have to shell out another $200,000 to new contractors just to finish the work they abandoned.
“This isn’t just a bad business decision or ‘I don’t know how to build houses,’” Newman said. “This was — he chose to lie. He chose to steal. And Raquelle chose to lie and to steal, along with him.”
A third victim told the NBC affiliate that he was forced to declare bankruptcy after the couple defrauded him, leaving his home project unfinished.
Federal records show the Judges spent roughly $865,000 of company funds on personal expenses — including $10,000 on plastic surgery and a shocking $82,000 on Amazon purchases.
Simmons filed a civil lawsuit against the Judges, following in the footsteps of many of their previous clients. He went a step further and hired an inspector — who revealed that Christopher had been pretending to be a licensed architect all along.
Other victims described a familiar pattern of the Judges’ sloppy work and poor professionalism — from unpaid supply orders to abandoning projects entirely halfway through.
On December 17, Raquelle pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She faces up to five years in federal prison, with sentencing scheduled for April 14.
Christopher pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on December 30. He now faces up to 20 years in federal prison, with sentencing set for May 12.
