Twin Cities ‘house-flipper’ faces nearly 5 years in prison for investor fraud scheme

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A Twin Cities woman posing as a house-flipper has been sentenced to prison for defrauding clients out of their investments. 

Suzanne Griffiths, 46, has been sentenced to 58 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and is ordered to pay $1,661,407.50 in restitution for defrauding multiple clients from 2018 to 2020, according to the Department of Justice. 

Court documents state Griffith executed a scheme to defraud individuals by soliciting investments in her Minnesota-based house-flipping businesses Level 5 Properties, LLC; 45 North Investment Properties, LLC and Our Town Properties.

Griffiths was active in the house-flipping community and frequently attended seminars of a national real estate investment coaching program. Through these seminars, she networked with other individuals and pitched her own house-flipping businesses. She frequently contacted seminar attendees about potential investment opportunities in properties, promising investors various manners of repayment in return for investments, according to court documents. 

However, Griffiths frequently made misrepresentations about the status of real estate projects, failed to take promised action, falsified documents, and misappropriated investments for her own use, according to charges. 

Court documents state in November 2018, Griffiths solicited a $100,000 investment from an investor to finance the renovation of a property. In July 2020, Griffiths solicited a $70,000 investment from another investor. Both investors lost their entire investment due to misrepresentations of the property details.

Currently, the companies owned by Griffiths have 18 different criminal convictions in Minnesota, according to the Department of Justice.