WFAA is reporting that Thomas Lucas, Jr. was indicted by a United States Grand Jury on charges of defrauding investors. Court documents show “Lucas knowingly devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud certain investors, and to obtain money and property from these investors, by making materially false and fraudulent pretenses…”
He had investors pay inflated land prices claiming he had sources that Disney was planning on building a theme park in the area. The parcel of land near Celina remains a horse grazing location. Thomas Lucas Jr’s uncle Beau Lucas told reporters that he wholeheartedly felt Disney was coming and that they even had their own family invest in the property.
The Walt Disney Company did not comment on the story.