$12 Million Settlement Awarded To Customers Duped In House-Flipping Seminar Linked To HGTV’s Tarek El Moussa, Christina Hall, Hilary Farr

Zurixx LLC, the Utah-based company behind a lengthy scam that duped customers, often out of thousands of dollars, has been ordered to pay $12 million in damages to its victims. These victims were often lured to the seminars promoted by HGTV stars like Tarek El Moussa and Christina Hall, who endorsed the courses but never actually attended them.

The FTC awarded 25,563 customers $12 million worth of compensation, to be paid out by Zurixx, Deadline reports. The company and its owners, Christopher Cannon, James Carlson, and Jeffrey Spangler, would use the endorsements or falsely advertise the participation of many home renovation stars, including the El Moussas, who starred together in HGTV’s Flip or Flop, Hilary Farr of Love It Or List It, and Dave Seymour and Peter Souhleris of A&E’s Flipping Boston, to lure potential customers to a free real estate seminar where they would then be pressured to buy additional courses costing thousands of dollars.

According to the FTC, “presenters at the seminars encouraged consumers to open new credit cards to pay for the training, promising that the profits from flipping or wholesaling homes would quickly pay off the new debt.”

In addition to the financial settlement, the defendants were permanently banned from any future marketing, real estate or business coaching programs. The payout is the culmination of a years-long investigation, which first began in 2016.

Back in 2019, HGTV responded to the fact that many of its stars were involved with Zurixx after the investigation into its scams began, stating, “HGTV, its sister networks, and its parent company are neither associated or affiliated with Zurixx, nor are we involved in any of our talents’ personal business associations with Zurixx.”