FORT WORTH (1080 KRLD) - A contractor who bilked more than a dozen homeowners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars is going to prison.
Randy Sprinkle, 54, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after admitting to swindling more than a dozen Tarrant County homeowners out of more than $850,000.
Prosecutor Lori Varnell says Sprinkle was using up-front payments to pay for previous jobs, which she says is a business model that never works.
"It fails for the same reason a Ponzi scheme fails -- you can never get enough new customers to pay for the work that you've already promised to do," says Varnell. "In Texas, contractors who take down payments are required to keep it in a trust account and account for it as trust funds. This man was not doing that."
Furthermore, Varnell says Sprinkle was being very misleading to his victims.
"At one point, he told one of my victims, 'If you kick a contractor off a job in Texas, the contractor keeps the money.' That is not the law," says Varnell.
Most of Sprinkle's victims were elderly, and he would leave their homes in shambles.
"There's one victim in particular that he messed her house up so badly, she asked contractors to come in and give her bids, and they wouldn't even give her a bid," says Varnell. "Some of the work, as a 72-year-old woman, she's having to do herself."
The 15-year sentence is for Sprinkle's guilty plea to Thefr of Property.
In addition, Judge George Gallagher sentenced Sprinkle to a concurrent 10-year prison term and 10 years probation for Misapplication of Fiduciary Funds.
Sprinkle will also be required to make restitution to his victims.