Millennium Title: More on Nancy Jackson Carroll’s Arrest in Lake Forest, Illinois
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As we told you Friday, Texas attorney and title company owner Nancy Jackson Carroll (Spinks) was arrested in Lake Forest, Ill., for theft and KXAS-TV’s Scott Gordon was fabulously on top of the story. Here’s a little more on Mrs. Spinks and her life in Lake Forest, one of Chicago’s most affluent suburbs.
Lake Forest, Ill.: $2,395,000
Lake Forest is located along the North Shore of Lake Michigan and is an upscale suburb of Chicago, my hometown. It is loaded with affluent homes and well known for polo. Recall in The Great Gatsby when Tom Buchanan’s polo ponies were “bred in Lake Forest”? Some say the character of Tom’s wife, Daisy Buchanan, was based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ex-girlfriend, Lake Forest resident Ginevra King, whose family brought polo ponies to Lake Forest. The town was built around Lake Forest College, a private four-year liberal arts college in the center of town. If I had to compare it one-on-one to an upscale Dallas community, it’s Highland Park with the collegiate flavor of University Park.
House Carroll-Spinks leased
So here was where Nancy Carroll Spinks (married name, new husband) was found and arrested and is sitting in a Lake County jail awaiting extradition. She is so lucky she is not in a Cook County jail.
Last week, mid-week, I received an email from a resident of Lake Forest who had read the blog and recognized Nancy Carroll from the post. We spoke by phone. The source told me that Carroll was living in a large Lake Forest home paying about $8,500 a month in rent, and had started a business there.
“Someone needs to turn her in,” said my source, and agreed to contact police.
According to my source, Carroll-Spinks was operating a moving truck business in Lake Forest and had rented a house in Italy for the summer.
According to Gordon’s report on KXAS, Carroll was not only renting the Lake Forest house, she was driving a Merecedes -Benz S63 (they retail for $143,250) and was buying jewelry. She sure had her pick, there are some fabulous jewelry stores in Lake Forest. And to think she told Scott Gordon in an email that she had to sell her car to pay her employees. According to the prosecutor Scott interviewed, the Texas Department of Insurance is pursuing a $1.2 million case against her and about $3 million is missing from Millennium Title Company.
What about the rest of the money in those 1031 Exchanges? Good question.
We are on this story because we think it is a vital real estate story and may expose some big protection gaps in the system. If you have any more information, please email or call. Thankfully, there are many fine, trustworthy title companies in North Texas.
Because if you cannot trust a title company to hold your funds in escrow, who can you trust?
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There is much more to the story. Scott Schambacher and i were featured on NBC 5, February 12,2016 as one of the investors that lost money. We closed the sale of a commercial building and placed $1,000,000 dollars into a 1031 exchange trust account with Nancy Carroll. We had 4 properties identified and had earnest money contracts with title commitment at her office. Nearing the close date of these transactions were nearing. Scott stopped by the Millennium office in Southlake to check after repeated un answered calls to her office. Finding out she was missing was very disturbing. Scott said Jeff find out everything you can about Nancy.
Nancy has obviously been planning this for the past couple of years. It was not only her that needs to be arrested. There is a whole crime ring mostly family members and several others involved to do so much in such a short time. Her mother Nancy Jackson 66 was a signer on the 1031 exchange account that our money was stolen from. She was also quite the real estate investor and has several properties in her name. Deanne Stehling 37 her sister is also involved. She was a CPA for Millennium Title and also has knowledge of what she was up to. Deanne also was involved and has several properties that have been purchased in her name and then transferred into different Trusts. Her ex Husband Shelby Carroll also involved. Shelby’s mother also involved. Her current husband is 21 years old and also has properties in his name. There daughter is 5 so it does not take a genius to figure out that she is also a sex offedender. I also found several others that appear to be in loop because of trail of properties with same MO being purchased for an undisclosed amount and then transferred around and ending up in a similar trust. Cross checking all of the properties has also identified that this has been happening since 2014. In our case she blatantly stole trust funds. In others she simply used the Title company to write Title Policies for closing transactions and with help manipulated the books to conceal her dirty little secret. She would issue the wire transfers out in the correct amount as the pay off of the closed transaction but instead of paying off the property she would simply transfer the payment into an account that she controlled. She was basically running a huge scheme to withdraw as much as she could before she got caught. Leaving everyone in her path in a bad situation. Scott put a bounty on her for $50k to find where she was. From that we have been contacted by several of her victims. An attorney that lost $1.5 m that she had been doing business with for years said he just can’t believe that she would do something like this. Another, said that she wired him $700k instead of the $300k he was to have gotten from close. He was told to wire the money back to an unknown account and that she would wire the correct amount back. He sent wire back as most honest people would. As he followed up on the payment of funds she suddenly disappeared leaving him at a loss. There have been many stories that we know are real and correct. There are others that we have heard second hand that say there are losses in the 20 to even 30 million dollar range. Currently there is know confirmation on the total amount of money missing at this time.
Anyone that thinks criminals are not mythical and well educated need to think again. Nancy had her Law degree, a masters and a doctrine degree. She spent her whole life in school getting an education to become a criminal. Smart girl.
I guess that is enough for now.
I hope she gets what is coming to her. I hope the legal system helps stop this type of activity.
Is there anymore news on this story and can you tell me the involvement of Keith and Leigh Ann Hafner? I thought they were part owner in this business.
Keith and Leighann were not Owners and were instrumental in bringing her down.
Thanks for the update Jeff. Sorry you are having to go through this. Any update is she still in jail?
She is on her way to Fort Worth still. Apparently the transfer bus makes lots of stops!
We were going to be at here court date today , but we were told it has been post pond because she was not here yet. There are more indictments coming for others in her circle. There was a whole group of people in on this scam. We have been contacted by American Greed to do an episode on this crime. We have now heard that she may have stolen as much as $30 million with her scam that has many participants. She involved not only her Mother, Sister, Husband, Ex Husband, and Ex Husbands Mother but also others are being tracked. It appears that some are involved without knowledge of what they were actually involved in. I have been contacted by people that closed at Millennium Title that have been left with un paid mortgages from houses they sold. Nancy would write Title policy’s and not pay off mortgages.
I will continue post soon ( more info )
Please call me
This all makes perfect sense now. We had our new home almost foreclosed on because the old reverse mortgage wasn’t paid off at closing. Found out about the foreclosure second hand. Our mortgage company, realtor, etc all said it “must be a mistake” call Nancy and find out. She did some weird stuff and mailed a check to Wells Fargo instead of wiring it to a different address, not even the reverse mortgage portion. I had to chase it down, she wouldn’t work with the people handling the foreclosure at Wells Fargo. We didn’t know enough about this and how it was supposed to work at the time (first house) but we were ~2 days from our house being sold out from under us, and she really wasn’t supposed to be handling it (per other attorney that said she no longer works for them.) We thought it was weird at the time, but we were told “oh title companies are just like that, this kind of stuff happens.” I feel dirty even being associated with this and we didn’t do anything but buy a house and use the title attorney suggested by our realtor and the sellers realtor. Lesson learned.
I want to appoligies to Shelby Carroll and his mother directly through this site for mentioning there names. I was not attacking them directly. After reading my post I feel it was not clear of my intention. Reading further I said that some where involved not even knowing it.
My sincere apologies.
Any update. Is she still in jail or did she post bond?
good thing you apologized. Shelby probably had nothing to do with this and he is a big MF.