As Texas real estate guru Tie Lasater built a millionaire brand, investors say they lost their savings 46%
By Eric Dexheimer0% Yamil Berard0%
7/21/2026, 11:00:00 AM
Topics: Real Estate Investment, Financial Influencers, Fraud, Foreclosure, Bankruptcy, Tenant Rights, Consumer Protection
Keywords: Keycity, Tie Lasatar, City Of Bryan, Better World Properties, Lasater Capital, Southlake City Lifestyle, Texas State Securities Board, Keycity Capital, Worlds No 1 Capital Closer, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, City Council, Tie, Dallas Business Journal, Stars, Covid, Zillow, Mavericks, World, Federal Trade Commission, Iowa Hawkeye, Ufc, The Powerful, Lasaters, Tie Lasater, Melvina Rushing, Langstroth, Jt Foxx, Shiloh Boone Lasater, Kim Kardashian, Michele Nobles, Rolls Royce, Edward Bond, Martin Zimmerman, Melissa Mcilhaney, Michael Knight, Jeffrey Schroeder, Donald Trump, George Ross, Americans, People, Vanilla Ice, Hugh Hewitt, Mel Gibson, Kathy Ireland, Michael Irvin, Bruce Buffer, Texas Oil Exec, Rich Dad, Therealestatemillionaire, Charles Skaugstad, Terrance Hugar, Jt, Burleson, Substack, X, Kevin Costner, What Trump, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Texas, Ferguson, Dallas, American Airlines Center, Meadows, Sacramento, Florida, Hearst, College Station, International Investing Hall Of Fame, Bryan, Southlake, Stephenville, Tennessee, Alabama, Iowa, California, Kinnick Stadium, Tarrant County, Memphis, Big Tex Goes To Washington, Rushing, Great American State Fair, Lasater 200 000, The Promote, Facebook, Worlds 1 Wealth And Business, Presidents Suite, Empower Pharmacy, Range Rover, The Hugh Hewitt Show, The New Generation Of Real Estate Millionaires, Mission Impossible, Chronicle
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Self-Serving Bias, and Overconfidence Bias, with Halo Effect as the most egregious example at 9.9% saturation with 329 hits. Analysis detected 2,244 faulty-reasoning hits from 3,335 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 48.5% and a BS Rank of 46% (10,550 of 19,233 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 54.90% of the article peer group.
In his cover photo on the April 2026 edition of Southlake City Lifestyle, Tie Lasater projects casual but unmistakable wealth and attainment.
Holding a thick cigar and sporting fashionably distressed jeans and aviator shades, he leans against the polished wheel of a Rolls Royce, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.
Inside the magazine, which targets residents and businesses of the affluent Dallas suburb, a write-up proclaims his real estate investment company as “the place to build wealth.”
A two-page advertisement reassures prospective investors that he “has been investing in real estate for 17 years and has never lost investor capital.”
In numerous social media posts, Lasater displays his glittering lifestyle as evidence of his financial acumen and success: luxury cars, a mansion, celebrity friends, professional athletes and “billionaire” associates.
Yet even as he has solicited millions more from investors, behind the scenes a more troubling version of Lasater’s empire has been unfolding.
Contrary to his claims of an unbroken winning streak, in lawsuits and interviews, a growing number of people say brothers Tie and Shiloh Boone Lasater and their company, KeyCity Capital (recently renamed Lasater Capital), lost them millions of dollars as properties went into foreclosure or bankruptcy.
Kit Langstroth said he has only $80,000 to show for his $1.6 million investment with Lasater.
Now 65, the formerly retired Sacramento resident said he had to secure a reverse mortgage on his house to raise cash.
He has reactivated his chiropractic license so he can return to work.
“We’re just trying to survive now,” he said.
Investors aren’t the only ones claiming harm.
Residents of Lasater-owned properties say they have been forced to live in abysmal conditions as the buildings, many of them decades old, have deteriorated around them.
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Earlier this year, Melvina Rushing and her daughter, residents of Meadows at Ferguson in Dallas, were thrown to the floor as a cascade of drywall, wood scraps and water rained down on them.
“The whole ceiling just fell on me,’’ she said.
Rushing ended up in the emergency room.
On June 9, the Texas State Securities Board ordered the Lasaters and their associated companies to stop raising investor money immediately.
By not disclosing their dismal financial track record, Lasater was “making offers containing statements that are materially misleading or otherwise likely to deceive the public,” the agency alleged.
In response to a list of detailed questions from Hearst newspapers, the Lasaters, through their attorney, wrote that “many of your statements are wrong and (we) urge you to investigate them further,” without providing specifics.
The state securities board’s cease and desist order, they wrote, was not based on findings but rather “unproven and disputed claims.”
The Lasaters will present "substantial evidence" disputing the allegations and "are highly confident of a favorable result after the true facts have been presented."
An initial hearing in the case was set for last week, but was postponed to "allow the parties to engage in meaningful settlement discussions," according to a July 14 filing.
“We won't litigate this issue in the press, especially in light of the robust disclosures to investors in our offering documents,” they wrote.
KeyCity offering documents solicited “accredited investors" — typically those with a minimum net worth of $1 million — and noted that “investing in private real estate and alternative investment funds secured by real estate asset-backed investments has certain inherent risks, which could result in the loss of some or all of your principal investment.”
KeyCity’s struggles are one more chapter in the commercial real estate pile-up that has occurred over the past several years.
Thanks to climbing interest rates and costs, and declining occupancies and rents, many companies that went on multi-family buying sprees following the pandemic have struggled to pay their bills.
Plenty have defaulted on loans; billions in equity have been wiped out as valuations tanked.
Yet the apparent disconnect between Lasater’s self-promotion and his track record also highlights the risks to investors from the growing economy of online financial influencers — so-called “fin-fluencers.”
Research suggests Americans increasingly are investing based on advice from social media personalities.
Deploying their own rags-to-riches narratives, fin-fluencers promise more than mere business opportunities.
In seminars, reels and on podcasts, many display designer clothes, sprawling homes and expensive cars to tout their can’t-lose, high-return investment secrets, lifestyle coaching and wealth makeovers promising lives free of financial stress.
In what associates and investors described as a methodical campaign to create an image of himself as successful and influential, Lasater spent tens of thousands of dollars in the fin-fluencer support economy, arranging face time with celebrities and appearances on talk shows to inflate his profile and line up new investors.
'Parties with A-List celebrities and billionaires'
“In the past 10 years, this man has built a portfolio of real estate in the multiple millions,” declares one of Lasater’s promotional videos featuring an endorsement from the musician and home-renovator Vanilla Ice surrounded by cascading packets of cash.
“He has built a following of entrepreneurs in the thousands.
He hangs with, does business with and parties with multiple A-List celebrities, multi-millionaires and billionaires throughout the world.
He and his partners have been referred to as the heavyweight champions of real estate.”
Yet a review of KeyCity’s once-sprawling real estate holdings more suggests a battered player sprawled on the mat.
Public documents contend lenders have foreclosed on more than $100 million in loans on properties owned by Lasatar’s companies in Tennessee, Florida and Texas.
Of the 3,700-unit multi-family portfolio displayed on KeyCity Capital’s website as of mid-2025, more than a third have been lost to foreclosures.
Properties in Texas and Alabama had receivers appointed to manage them because they were so distressed.
Others have been mired in bankruptcy court or papered with liens.
The company and its officers have more than $24 million in legal judgments against them so far, according to public records.
Last year, the City of Dallas forced the Meadows at Ferguson, which Lasater purchased in 2022, into receivership after officials alleged his company failed to address dozens of code violations, according to court documents and city officials.
The Lasaters disputed the city’s claims, writing that “(v)irtually all violations were resolved before the suit was filed in the first place.”
In June, the City of Bryan ordered residents out of a property Lasater lost in foreclosure the previous August after inspectors determined it had so many dangerous violations — some dating back to prior owners — that it was a life-safety hazard.
“We’ve tried over and over again to get them to repair things,” said Martin Zimmerman, the city’s development services director.
(A judge has allowed tenants to remain for the time being.)
Two other nearby Lasater-owned multi-family properties left more residents in crumbling apartments, according to residents and news reports.
“This is an example of someone preying on our most vulnerable citizens, putting some of them in situations they aren’t sure how to get out of,” College Station City Council member Melissa McIlhaney said of KeyCity last summer.
In a statement at the time, KeyCity blamed economic setbacks and bureaucratic hurdles for delayed repairs.
But, the company stressed, “We’ve invested heavily in this project, and we’re here for the long haul.”
Through their lawyer, the Lasaters wrote that some of their properties “have ongoing needs.”
But “to claim that a property deteriorated following its acquisition is false,” they added.
“Additionally, our tenant relations are extremely important to us and we have never ignored them, nor will we ever do that.”
'A sought-after international speaker'
Tie Lasater’s rise in the world of real estate was rapid.
According to his origin story described in social media posts, the Stephenville native started about 15 years ago, flipping houses for modest profits.
By 2018, he had begun acquiring a small portfolio.
It was around then that Lasater discovered the wealth empowerment world.
“With absolutely no money,” he wrote, he attended a Rich Dad seminar.
Part of a self-described “global movement” of financial advice, motivation and lifestyle-enhancement educational programs founded by Robert Kiyosaki, the presenter “gracefully showed us how we were totally screwing up how we invested in property,” Lasater wrote.
“Within a month, we had gone from doing 14 deals in 2 years to, that next month, we did 12 deals,” he wrote.
Lasater soon embraced a team of wealth coaches and mentors, according to his posts.
Topping the list was “the World's #1 Wealth and Business coach JT Foxx,” whose trainings he “poured a significant amount of money and time into.”
Foxx’s website highlights his own self-made story and features a “Celebrity moments” section resembling People magazine.
His executive coaching packages sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
“Celebrity branding and media branding has built me from one small business to having 10 highly successful businesses,” Lasater wrote in a 2019 Facebook post.
By then, he said, his portfolio had grown to 84 units.
A year later, it was 460.
In 2020, Lasater said he soon hoped to have $1 billion raised and a portfolio of 10,000 apartment units.
By 2021, he had 1,800.
In 2022, the portfolio grew to 3,555.
In a Dallas Business Journal article that year, he revised his investment goal to $2 billion.
“I’ve been told ‘You scaled too fast,’” he wrote in an online post, dismissing the concerns.
He adopted the handle @therealestatemillionaire and granted himself the title “World’s No.
1 Capital Closer.”
KeyCity’s explosive growth coincided with a booming market.
Bottled-up demand after the COVID-19 lockdown and high prices for single-family homes drove up apartment occupancy and rental rates.
Syndicators leveraged investor money with nearly no-interest loans to snap up multi-family complexes and watched their portfolio values soar.
Yet by late 2022, the market was catching up.
Interest rates and costs began climbing as occupancy fell.
For many, what once was a sure profit machine suddenly couldn’t cover the bills, much less pay for upgrades or investor distributions.
Between 2022 and 2024, KeyCity added 600 units.
In an early 2025 video, Lasater boasted about raising $10 million from investors in 30 days.
“Once I learned how to leverage investor psychology, everything changed,” he said.
The company appeared less interested in managing its acquired properties, said Michael Knight, executive vice president of Better World Properties, which took over KeyCity’s dilapidated Bryan complex in August 2025 after the bank foreclosed on it.
“They were all about getting deals done, and they were good at raising money so they could go out and buy large amounts of property very quickly,” he said.
Lasater began living the life promoted by his coaches.
In 2021, he purchased a 9,500 square foot house in Southlake, appraisal records show.
Zillow recently valued the six-bedroom, 10-bath home at more than $4 million.
A lawsuit filed by a business associate described lending Lasater $200,000 to help pay for his wife’s “brand new custom Range Rover.”
(The Lasaters have denied wrongdoing and filed a counterclaim asserting the associate tried to steal their clients.)
Investors said they met with KeyCity executives to discuss deals in country clubs or at Dallas’s American Airlines Center, where Lasater had a luxury suite and access to athletes as a Stars and Mavericks sponsor.
But many found him online via his cultivated profile as not just a successful businessman, but as a financial sage with a low-risk, high-return investment system to sell.
In addition to a stream of videos touting his economic insights and strategies, Lasater said he wrote investment books, started a podcast and toured the country offering seminars, webinars and coaching to investors and aspiring entrepreneurs.
He appeared on talk shows regularly to offer market observations.
“A sought-after international speaker, Tie shares his insights and inspiration with audiences, motivating others to achieve financial success,” his biography on the company’s 2025 website said.
It’s about the positioning
Promoters promising a map leading to vast treasure are nothing new.
Yet, the "ease with which fin-fluencers can create and share content on social media and, in turn, influence their viewers to invest reveals the extent to which the fin-fluencer regulatory landscape contrasts with regulations and disclosure requirements placed on traditional financial advisers,” a 2024 study noted.
Despite the scant government oversight, the nonprofit Financial Industry Regulatory Authority found a quarter of investors surveyed in early 2026 had made investment decisions based on recommendations from a social media personality.
For those aged 18 to 34, the number was closer to two-thirds.
While there are as many styles as promoters, a typical fin-fluencer offers his personal prosperity journey as proof of concept: He, too, was stuck working long hours for little pay until a deceptively simple path to riches was revealed.
Now, he’d like to share what he has learned — for free at first, perhaps as a financial partner or part of a paid coaching package later.
Celebrity connections often are used as an enticement.
Lasater’s primary coach, Foxx, sells training packages that can include opportunities to be photographed with, or to interview the famous on-stage.
The images can then be used in the fin-fluencer’s content as evidence of his legitimacy, status and reach.
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At one Foxx event, Lasater explained in a 2018 Facebook post, “he introduced us to George Ross, who was Donald Trump’s right-hand man and advisor on all his real estate transactions for 40 years.
JT offered us with a (sic) chance to interview George which we would be able to feature on all our marketing.”
“People don’t buy the best product or service,” Foxx explained in a recent social media post.
“They buy the brand they recognize, respect, and remember.
That’s the power of celebrity branding.
When I interviewed Kevin Costner, had lunch with Julia Roberts, and spent the day on the set of ‘Mission Impossible’ with Tom Cruise, people thought it was about the photo.
It wasn’t.
It was about the positioning.”
Foxx did not respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment.
In addition to his connection to Vanilla Ice, Lasater has highlighted his “celebrity collaborations” with actor Mel Gibson, model Kathy Ireland, former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin and UFC announcer Bruce Buffer, though there is no indication any partnered with the Lasaters in their business deals.
Most influencers 'anti-skilled'
Another fin-fluencer profile-building tactic is to arrange appearances in legitimate-seeming media to confer establishment credibility.
Some are pay-to-play promotional vehicles.
One of Lasater’s promotional posts shows him appearing on the cover of The Powerful magazine teasing an article, “The New Generation of Real Estate Millionaires.”
The internet has no record of the publication.
Nor do any searches yield results for an International Investing Hall of Fame, into which Lasater says he was inducted.
Another fin-fluencer strategy is guest appearances on shows in which hosts interview them as experts.
Hosts sometimes receive sponsorship fees in exchange.
KeyCity’s favorite outlet was “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” a California-based, nationally syndicated radio show with an estimated 2 million listeners.
Lasater and KeyCity executives made dozens of appearances on the show between 2022 and 2025.
KeyCity was identified as a sponsor of the show, and Hewitt disclosed that he invested with the company.
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Investors say the appearances made an impression.
“During his radio broadcasts, Hugh Hewitt repeatedly and enthusiastically endorsed KeyCity, stated that he personally invested with KeyCity, and represented that he only recommends products and companies in which he has personal confidence and investment,” 72-year-old Michele Nobles wrote in a lawsuit filed earlier this year.
She alleged KeyCity lost her entire $1 million retirement nest egg.
(The Lasaters have not yet filed a response.)
Good financial influencers can help demystify the arcane world of finance and investing.
Yet experts caution there is ample reason to be skeptical.
More than half of social media-related fraud in the first half of 2023 was investment related, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Consumer protection organizations have warned investors about being seduced — especially by celebrity ties, where the terms of a star’s association are not always clear.
In 2022, Kim Kardashian paid a $1.26 million penalty for not disclosing she earned a quarter-million dollars to endorse a crypto token.
The authors of a 2023 study evaluated how individual fin-fluencers’ investment advice stacked up.
Researchers divided them into “skilled” (following their advice produced good returns), “unskilled” (their advice was essentially the same as no advice) and “antiskilled,” in which following their advice would have led to losses.
Barely a quarter of fin-fluencers qualified as skilled.
By comparison, 55% were classified as “antiskilled.”
The online world of fin-fluencers, the authors concluded, was a place where “engagement and visibility, rather than content quality, drive follower growth.”
'4 Keys of Wealth'
Among KeyCity’s unhappy investors, Charles Skaugstad tells a common story.
In 2022, according to his federal lawsuit, Lasater went to Iowa seeking money for his next project.
Boosted by the presence of a pair of well-known former Iowa Hawkeye football players, he made his pitch in Kinnick Stadium’s President’s Suite.
“Lasater and KeyCity presented themselves as savvy, successful real estate developers and managers” and “promised to deliver the ‘4 Keys of Wealth,’” the lawsuit claims.
Skaugstad invested more than $1 million.
The first sign of trouble was when quarterly reports stopped arriving, he wrote.
Vacancy rates at the apartment complex he bought into outside of Burleson kept rising.
Lasater urgently demanded investors send more money to keep the project afloat; Skaugstad said he was given one day to come up with $140,000.
In October 2025, the bank acquired the property at a foreclosure sale.
According to his complaint, it was a month before Skaugstad learned his money was gone: “Even then, the ‘World’s #1 Capital Closer’ began talking about the next deal and the hope for a brighter future.”
The Lasaters have denied any wrongdoing.
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While the Lasaters and KeyCity face civil suits, they have not been charged with any crimes.
Yet in court filings and media posts, investors and analysts have raised questions about the company’s business practices.
In July 2025, Terrance Hugar won a $690,000 judgment against Lasater and his companies for mishandling his investment, according to Tarrant County court records; the case is on appeal.
Meanwhile, Hugar filed a new complaint claiming Lasater engaged in a series of “fraudulent transfers” of his mansion and other properties “to hinder, delay, or defraud” Hugar from collecting on the debt.
Lasater’s companies have denied the allegations.
In a lawsuit filed in late June, KeyCity investor Jeffrey Schroeder alleged that without "Schroeder’s knowledge or consent,” the Lasaters made him personally responsible for any loan default.
Since that project went into foreclosure, he claimed, the bank has tried to collect millions more from him than he invested.
The Lasaters have not yet responded to the claims.
In a series of X and Substack posts, as well as on the commercial real estate newsletter The Promote, Edward Bond questioned KeyCity’s business methods in technical detail.
Bond, whose Florida company purchases bad debt and distressed commercial property, noted Lasater promoted what appeared to be greatly exaggerated values for his properties to investors.
KeyCity purchased the six-property, 1,240-unit package of Memphis apartment units in 2021 for $82 million.
Despite the market’s struggles, an August 2024 KeyCity pitch for a new investment fund boasted the properties had already jumped in value to $130 million.
A year later, a company affiliated with their lender purchased them at a foreclosure sale for $42 million.
Bond also has unearthed investor documents for the Memphis deal showing that KeyCity appeared to charge investors far more than industry-standard fees for putting together deals.
Then, he wrote, they "proceeded to lose all their investors’ capital.”
Analysis
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