A 70-year-old attorney in Grand Prairie, Texas, was arrested this week on federal charges built around a pitch familiar to a lot of retirement savers: buying liens on properties with unpaid taxes. Prosecutors say David Thomas Gilchrist collected roughly $1.45 million from about 20 people between April 2023 and January 2026 and sent back only a fraction of it. The case is a reminder that even a licensed professional’s investment pitch is worth checking before money changes hands, especially when the numbers don’t add up on their own.
What Prosecutors Say Happened to the Property Tax Lien Money
Buying a property tax lien is a real, legal way to invest: a county sells the right to collect an overdue tax bill, plus interest, to whoever pays it, and if the owner doesn’t repay within a set window the lienholder can eventually force a sale. Prosecutors say Gilchrist used that legitimate structure as the hook. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, he entered into roughly 20 partnership arrangements between April 2023 and January 2026, telling investors their money would go toward buying liens on Texas properties with delinquent taxes. Instead, prosecutors say he received approximately $1.45 million and returned only about $789,000, spending the rest on personal expenses and using new investor money to make Ponzi-like payments to people who had invested earlier.
Gilchrist was arrested Aug. 31 and charged by criminal complaint — not indicted by a grand jury and not convicted — with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and witness tampering. He is presumed innocent unless the government proves otherwise. “Mr. Gilchrist’s alleged conduct strikes at the heart of investor trust and the integrity of our financial system,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said in the office’s Sept. 1 announcement.
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A Parallel SEC Case Adds Three More Alleged Offerings
The criminal case is not the only one Gilchrist is facing. On Aug. 31, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against him in the same federal court, covering more ground than the tax lien pitch alone. The SEC alleges that from March 2021 through October 2025 — a longer window than the criminal case covers — Gilchrist raised more than $1.85 million from at least 22 investors across four separate fraudulent securities offerings. Beyond the tax lien pitch, the SEC says he told at least one investor their money would go toward advancing settlement payments to class-action plaintiffs, then used it for other purposes.
The SEC complaint also names Texas podcast host Christopher “Aaron” Novinger, who it says solicited investors in two of the offerings and, in one, falsely told two investors he had personally put his own money in while facilitating the transfer of their money to Gilchrist. Novinger’s wife, Rebecca Novinger, is named only as a relief defendant, meaning the SEC is seeking to recover funds that passed through her accounts, not accusing her of wrongdoing.
Forged Documents and a Suggested Trip to Mexico
Prosecutors say the case escalated once the SEC started asking questions. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, when the SEC opened its investigation, Gilchrist provided forged notary documents to try to mislead investigators. During sworn SEC testimony in April and May, he reportedly admitted to redacting homeowners’ names on the forged paperwork and to using a woman — whom prosecutors say he falsely placed at the center of the operation — to identify homeowners and hand-deliver cash. Prosecutors allege that days before that testimony, Gilchrist suggested the woman and her husband “take a vacation” to Mexico so federal investigators couldn’t reach them.
Those obstruction allegations are why witness tampering and aggravated identity theft charges were added on top of wire fraud. If convicted, Gilchrist would face up to 20 years in federal prison on each of the wire fraud and witness tampering counts, plus a mandatory two-year sentence on the identity theft charge that runs consecutively, on top of any other time. None of that has been decided; a criminal complaint is prosecutors’ opening word, not a verdict, and Gilchrist has not yet entered a plea.
The Ponzi-Scheme Warning Signs Worth Checking Before You Invest
The property tax lien pitch had a specific hook, but the underlying pattern prosecutors describe — new investor money paying off earlier investors while the person running it keeps the difference — is what regulators call a Ponzi-like structure. The SEC’s investor education arm lists the classic warning signs: guaranteed high returns with little or no risk, unregistered investments, unlicensed sellers, and difficulty getting paid out when you ask for your money back, according to Investor.gov. A private partnership to buy tax liens, sold person-to-person rather than through a registered broker, touches several of those boxes at once.
None of that proves fraud by itself — plenty of legitimate private deals exist — but it is exactly the kind of arrangement Investor.gov tells people to verify independently before wiring money, by confirming the person selling the investment is actually licensed and registered.
Why Retirement Savers Are Often the Target
Investor.gov’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy has specifically warned about Ponzi schemes aimed at older investors, noting that decades of saving can make retirees an attractive target, and citing past SEC cases — including one where defendants stole roughly $1.3 million from senior investors through real estate promissory notes — that followed the same script: promise a safe, high-yield investment, then use new money to keep paying off the old, according to Investor.gov’s senior investor alert. The agency’s advice is specific, not generic: use the free search tool on Investor.gov to confirm a seller is licensed before handing over money, take time before deciding, and be wary of pressure to act immediately or roll an existing investment into a new one.
For the roughly 20 people prosecutors say put money into Gilchrist’s tax lien pitch, that check would have come too late to help. The SEC’s own case history is the clearest evidence of where that kind of scrutiny has caught these losses before they grew.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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