A blind trust held by state Sen. Angela Paxton and Attorney General Ken Paxton put $600,000 into a construction materials company whose owner had served a federal sentence for mortgage fraud, according to an investigation published Friday by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica. The company went on to buy a sand mine in Denison and a concrete plant in Gunter, the news organizations reported.
The report is based on previously unreleased records gathered for Ken Paxton's 2023 impeachment, the Tribune said.
What the report says
According to the Tribune and ProPublica, the money went to Wildcatter Sand Services, which Scott Sherman, a home builder from North Texas, built with his father. It arrived about four years after Sherman finished a federal prison term; the news organizations reported that he pleaded guilty in 2014 to taking part in a mortgage fraud conspiracy involving more than two dozen Dallas-Fort Worth area properties.
Under the trust's terms, a family friend, Chip Loper, was to handle the Paxtons' assets without taking investment instructions from them, the report said.
The news organizations reported that records show Ken Paxton had some knowledge of the trust's holdings, and that on their 2020 joint federal tax return the couple listed losses of more than $93,000 tied to two companies, Grayson County Sand and Gravel and Wildcatter Sand Services.
The report also said:
- Angela Paxton sat on a Wildcatter advisory board starting in 2022, a role she listed as "non-governing" on her financial disclosures.
- She voted for a 2023 bill, filed by then-Sen. Drew Springer, that allowed state environmental regulators at the TCEQ to set aside complaints from people who file more than five unsubstantiated complaints within seven years. Neighbors of the Gunter plant had complained to the agency about dust, and the agency issued violation notices to the plant's operator in 2021 and 2022.
- Wildcatter companies sent 15 wire payments totaling more than $83,000 to the trust between January and June 2023. The news organizations said their records are limited and they cannot say why the payments were made.
- Two Wildcatter companies later went delinquent on close to $200,000 in property taxes for 2023, and the local schools, cities and counties owed that money sued to collect it.
