Not long after he got the deed, Cohen dispatched a real estate agent to the property. As the agent was planting a "For Sale" sign in the yard, he was confronted by either Flora or Dee Hawkins. The woman and the real estate agent had a short argument about whether or not he had any business sticking that sign in the yard.
A few days later, Hawkins received an official eviction notice. The letter informed her that the Heights property now belonged to a man named Cohen. As Cohen would put it in a sworn statement, "[Hawkins] decided not." Hawkins next confronted Culwell and he said he had nothing to do with it.
A recent
Inc.com article identifies Brian Culwell as the CEO of fast-growing Gold and Silver Buyers, Inc. Culwell has claimed to the
Houston Press that he is neither an officer nor a director of Gold and Silver Buyers.
Barry Sigman
Brian Culwell has been a burr under Houston Better Business Bureau chief Dan Parson's saddle for years. Ten years ago, Parsons had bulging files full of complaints about Culwell's travel and jewelry sales businesses. More recently, Parsons says Gold and Silver Buyers attempted to claim BBB membership without bothering to join.
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According to sworn statements and depositions, Cohen was alarmed to learn that his ownership of the deed was in jeopardy (especially since he had never bothered to purchase title insurance), and he was still trying to get the rest of his money: "[Culwell] was telling me a few times I will pay you, I will pay you, but people owe me, people owe me. Every day I was calling him more than 10, 15 times. And then he disappeared. I don't hear from him nothing. I went to 1960 many times where he used to have the store. I don't see anybody. I talk to the jeweler that used to work with him. Nobody know nothing. People was coming to me and telling me...maybe he was owing more people money."
For her part, Hawkins went to the DA's office. She says she was told that she needed to get a lawyer to get her property back. She did, and after years in court, she finally won. The court ruled that by signing over the deed to Hawkins's property to Cohen, Culwell had breached his fiduciary duty to Hawkins. He was ordered to pay Hawkins $48,400 actual damages and $100,000 as exemplary damages and to return her property to her. (Anderson tells the Press that Culwell hasn't paid a penny of that judgment.) Cohen paid nothing to Hawkins, and was found not to have committed fraud, though he was left on the hook for the property taxes for the time he had the property.
Assistant District Attorney Russel Turbeville — no stranger to Culwell, as he had prosecuted him in the DreamKids case — also filed a felony theft charge against Culwell in the case; it was eventually pled down to state jail felony theft and Culwell got the maximum sentence for that charge: two years in a state jail, a sentence he apparently served in federal prison thanks to his probation revocation.
"Frankly, I thought that was less than he deserved," says Skip Oliver.
We'll give Dee Hawkins the last word on her case: "Mr. Brian was supposed to fix my credit and he didn't," she said in a sworn statement. "And then he went on to sell to Mr. Cohen my property which was not his."
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Skip Oliver says Culwell called him after he was released from prison. "He wanted to apologize for everything that he put me and Hakeem through," Oliver remembers. "I told him, 'Good luck, and I'm hoping you've learned something, but Brian, to be honest, because of where I work, we're not gonna be able to communicate.' I just hope he's doin' right by this business."
There is reason to believe that he is, at least so far. We personally investigated them with a little sack of scrap gold jewelry. In one case, Gold and Silver Buyers offered the best price out of three stores we went to that day, though not substantially more.
On another trip, the Gold and Silver Buyers offer was significantly lower than that offered by Houston Numismatic Exchange in Rice Village, but it didn't rise to the level of a rip-off. It does put the lie to their "If you sell your gold or silver to anyone else, you've just lost money" claim. Still, such hyperbole doesn't rise to the level of fraud.
So there's no reason to say that Culwell is still stealing, though one does wonder how he has been able to go from zero storefronts to 75 in three years. Culwell's wife Amelia has stated that it was because renting spaces inside supermarkets is very cheap.
That quote came to light back in March, when the Houston Chronicle produced its glittering profile of Brian and Amelia Culwell. After profiling the Culwells, Ronnie Crocker's article went on to drag the BBB's Dan Parsons into the fray. Parsons's role in the article was to provide expert tips to gold sellers on how not to get ripped off, and he stands by all the advice he gave in the article. (First and foremost, he says, get at least three quotes before you pull the trigger on any sale.)
What Parsons didn't know, and what chaps his hide now, is the fact that his statements were effectively (if unknowingly on the Chronicle's part) used to endorse the business of a man with a very shady past. And that anger turned to a white-hot rage when he discovered that as of August of this year, Gold and Silver Buyers had decided to endorse themselves with the BBB logo on their site without actually being a member of the group
