TikTok influencer Teddy Miller arrested on wire fraud charges (2024)

A TikTok-famous real estate flipper whose videos have racked up more than 3 million views is now facing federal charges over accusations he sold unwitting clients wildly lucrative “investment opportunities” in properties he never actually owned.

“Everyone wants to make more f*****g money,” Teddy Miller, the self-proclaimed “Wolf of West Virginia,” says in one recent clip. “And you should want to make more f*****g money. Because life’s too short to be a f*cking p***y.”

“Always remember, you can’t make money if you’re a f*cking p***y,” Miller says in another.

In a third, Miller, whose TikTok handle is “@howtomakecrazymoney,” tells viewers that keeping “big money reserves… is for p*****s,” echoing the sentiment emblazoned across the top of his website, which asks visitors, “Are you ready to start making some f*****g money, and stop being a p***y?”

However, Miller’s less-than-subtle sales pitch hid an even more brazen con, prosuectors say. That inlcuded fleecing untold numbers of marks via a get-rich-quick scheme that prosecutors allege only served to enrich one person: Miller.

On Monday, a criminal complaint against Miller, 34, was unsealed in West Virginia federal court, charging him with one count of wire fraud. Miller, who does not yet have an attorney listed in court records, appeared Monday afternoon before a US magistrate judge in Charleston, West Virginia. He was ordered detained pending a preliminary hearing.

His strategy was easy, and virtually risk-free, as the feds say Miller promised potential clients they’d get at least a 20 percent return on their money as he fixed up distressed properties and rented them out.

“Teddy Miller refuses to get involved in any investment that he would not use his own money for, so he personally guarantees every investor dollar he raises for these investments,” one of Miller’s websites states. “This means that in the extremely rare case that an investment would fail, we are forced to liquidate the collateral, and it does not cover the amount of money you as an investor are owed. Teddy Miller is still responsible for the balance and will pay you the difference of your original investment personally.”

Miller claimed his money-making technique would not only help revitalize struggling neighborhoods, but he also said he hired the homeless and formerly incarcerated to work on his projects to give them a “second chance” at life.

Miller’s social media profiles showed a young, wealthy, lavishly tattooed newlywed living a luxe life, traveling across the globe in search of adventure: “Here’s Teddy shooting a machine gun in Vietnam! Here’s Teddy scuba diving in the Philippines! Here’s Teddy and his bride in matching Gucci outerwear at the Louvre!”

But the FBI says it was all a fraud.

The bureau has been investigating Miller since March 14, 2023, when agents received a tip from the West Virginia Securities Commission that a complaint had come in about Miller selling unregistered securities to the public through a company called Bear Industries LLC.

In June 2022, a client identified in the complaint only as “C.T.,” emailed Miller after watching one of his TikToks about a dry-storage facility he wanted to construct in Charleston, according to the complaint.

“Miller responded to C.T. and claimed that the project was ‘a great way to make a hell of a return, create passive income with the equity you retain, and start your journey to sustainable wealth,’” the complaint states.

A “promotional investor packet” Miller attached said the property would be refinanced when construction was complete, and that investors were guaranteed their initial investment back, plus a 23 percent return, according to the complaint. After that, C.T. and Miller would share the rental income the property generated, the complaint added.

Miller, who had also incorporated entities called Blue Steel Modeling Agency LLC, and Stark Industries LLC, both apparent nods to the Ben Stiller film Zoolander and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, had answers ready to dispel any of C.T.’s doubts, the complaint says.

Upon reviewing the promotional packet, C.T. “did some of his own due diligence and discovered that the subject property was owned by Philco, LLC,” the complaint continues. However, Miller assuaged C.T.’s concerns by telling him, falsely, that he in fact controlled Philco, according to the complaint.

On June 30, 2022, C.T. signed an “investor agreement” and a “partnership agreement” to contribute funds to the dry-storage project, the complaint states. C.T. would give Miller and his wife $20,000 for 15 percent of the property, and Miller would repay C.T. the full $20,000, plus 15 percent of the property’s refinance, by August 2, 2023, according to the complaint. His interest was secured by the property, as well as a stake in Miller’s personal assets, the complaint says.

On July 5, 2022, C.T. wired the $20,000 from his home state of California to a Bear Industries bank account, the complaint states.

“Once Miller received the $20,000 wire in West Virginia… he transferred $4,000 of the funds to his personal bank account, paid employees, paid $5,266.64 toward a mortgage on a different property, and transferred approximately $9,000 to a separate bank account,” according to the complaint.

In November 2022, Miller told C.T. that construction on the dry-storage project had “slipped two months,” but that it would be open in 60 days, the complaint contends. But Miller subsequently ghosted C.T., who never heard back from him after December 2022 “despite multiple attempts to contact him.”

On June 10, 2024, C.T. went to West Virginia to see the dry-storage lot for himself, but “noticed that [it] had not been constructed,” according to the complaint.

“To date, C.T. has not received his investment back,” the complaint states.

Miller is being held without bond in the South Central Regional Jail on behalf of the US Marshals Service. If convicted, he could spend up to 20 years in prison.