Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This TikTok Couple is Going To Prison - The Christopher and Raquelle Judge Story

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Christopher and Raquelle Judge, a married couple from Fort Worth, Texas who built an online lifestyle and renovation following, pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud conspiracy charges in late 2025 for orchestrating a nearly $5 million home-building scam that defrauded more than 40 homeowners between August 2020 and January 2023. Through their company Judge DFW LLC, they promoted themselves on social media as custom home builders and designers, even falsely claiming Christopher was a licensed architect, then took large installment payments for construction and renovation projects that were never completed, often leaving families with unfinished or unsafe homes

So this TikTok couple is in big trouble. So the guy in this couple, his name's Chris. And Chris, he's about 30 when this story starts and he's living in Texas. Now Chris really wants to be a home improvement influencer with his wife, this woman, Raquel. And so they want to be home improvement influencers, which basically means that they're trying to be TikTokers who focus on home renovations and interior designs, stuff like that. So one day in 2020, Chris and Raquel decide to start their own home renovation and construction company.

They're basically going to remodel people's homes for them. And in order to market their new company, they start putting themselves on social media. Hey guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Raquel. We're with the Judge DFW Real Estate Group. Now during this time, Chris, he's working as a real estate agent. Plus, he knows a bit about construction. But that's not exactly what he tells people.

He actually lies to people and tells them that he's a licensed architect. In fact, he alludes to it right in his social media bio. Now, eventually, people start to reach out. I assume because they're seeing their videos and advertisements online. And these people, they're wanting things like new kitchen floors for their house or whatever. Once a potential customer shows interest, Chris and Raquel will offer them a low bid compared to their competitors. And Chris will promise to complete all the work, in four to six months.

And you get to move in knowing that you don't have to make any repairs. And people hear this deal and they're like, sounds good. Once they get into the contract and paperwork of it all, Raquel will let them know that they need a $10,000 deposit to get everything started. Then of course, the client pays the money and boom, the work officially starts. Now so far everything is going well and Chris and Raquel start attracting more and more clients. But then they start running into some problems. The main issue is that Chris, he really doesn't seem to have a good idea of what he's doing.

After a homeowner hires his company to do a job, he'll then turn around and hire cheap subcontractors to actually do the work. And a lot of times, those subcontractors will do a terrible job. And on top of that, sometimes Chris just won't even pay the subcontractors. And because the subcontractors aren't getting paid, they'll just stop showing up. So homeowners will be paying all this money for things like new windows or new doors or whatever, and those new windows or doors will just never get installed because the workers never showed up. And of course, at some point the clients start to realize, hey, all this stuff I'm paying for, it isn't getting done. What's the deal?

And Chris and Raquel will then come up with excuses like that this is a totally, normal delay in construction, and this happens all the time with home remodeling. And the homeowners don't want the work to completely stop, so they'll continue making the payments. And of course, these payments are going right into Chris and Raquel's pocket. Now, at some point, some of these homeowners will get mad, inevitably. Once this happens, once a client starts getting frustrated, they try to hit up Chris and complain, and Chris, he'll just, like, ghost them. Like, you just won't pick up their calls. So now a lot of these poor homeowners are stuck with a half-finished house and a contractor who's no longer answering his phone. What a nightmare. And if you think it can't

get worse than that, it actually does. So the homeowners remodeling projects that were abandoned by Chris and Raquel, these people are now having to pay new contractors to come in and fix the mess. And these aren't small projects either. Some homeowners pay Chris and Raquel hundreds of thousands of dollars to get work done. In fact, one homeowner gets screwed over by this so bad, this guy has to file for bankruptcy. Not only that, but a lot of these people move out of their house completely while the work is being done, and Chris flakes out and he stops showing up or whatever. And so now these people are without a place to live. So anyway, Chris and Raquel, they keep this scheme going. They're out there abandoning projects.

after project after project while still keeping these people's money. And they don't do this just like one or two times. They scam over 40 different people out of, are you ready for this? Five million dollars total. And of course, inevitably, like every scammer we talk about, Christian McCell, they're taking all this money they got and they are spending it on themselves. They spend $82,000, buying shit on Amazon. They spend $27,000 of it on their own mortgage payments. They spend $10,000 of it on plastic surgery. And all these shenanigans go on for a few years. And the really bad thing is that when homeowners report them to the police, police are basically like, oh, a contractor didn't show up for work? Sounds like a civil matter. Because, you know, contractors are notorious

for not showing up. Plus, police just don't yet realize. the severity of this fraud because they don't realize that over 40 families have been scammed. So it looks like nothing is ever going to be done about this and that Chris and Raquel can just keep taking homeowners money and abandoning their projects. This episode is brought to by Colagard. Do you know what's really scary? Not screening for colon cancer when you turn 45. The Colagard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off work, and shifts right to your door. In just three simple steps, Colagard takes the scare out of course. colon cancer screening. If you're

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claiming that he's an architect, including in his social media bio. And so the board issues him a formal warning. Like, bro, you're not a licensed architect. Stop telling people you are. Now, you would think that this formal warning would get Chris and Raquel to pump the brakes a little, you know, maybe slow down a bit on this whole scheme. But they don't. They keep taking on new clients, and they keep taking their current clients as money while leaving old abandoned projects behind. Now eventually, someone that they screwed over decides to take action and connect with other people that they screwed over. And this person starts a Facebook group. And quite a few former clients of Chris and Raquel's join this group and they all start sharing stories.

And some of them get so fed up that at some point they decide to file lawsuits against Chris and Raquel. Because a lot of these people lost a lot of money. Not to mention that the work Chris and Raquel oversaw was super. so cheaply done that a ton of it isn't even up to code. Like they built a two-car garage with no rafters. In one house, they put in floors that were uneven. And there are door openings in the same house that were all different sizes. They put in a lot of bad wiring and stuff.

In one place, they installed windows that weren't even rectangle. How do you even do that? And so anyway, because a lot of their work isn't up to code, Chris and Raquel's company ends up getting 424 citations for code enforcement violations. 424. Well, so anyway, eventually, so many people have been scammed by them that the local police and the FBI have to get involved. And they all start investigating together and they see that Chris isn't an architect at all. And then they find all these projects that weren't completed and how they're using the money they were paid for personal things.

And so, bam, Chris gets arrested. Also, bam, Raquel gets arrested. And I couldn't find a mugshot, but here's what they look like in real life. And so ultimately, they both take a plea deal, and they actually haven't been sentenced yet, but Raquel is facing up to five years in prison, while Chris is facing up to 20 years in prison.