A Hidalgo woman denies allegations that she stole a little more than $20,000 from a married couple for the build of their new home and says she plans to vigorously fight the charges.
Edinburg police arrested Amelia Del Carmen García, 40, and 45-year-old Edinburg resident Jose Andres Jurado on Feb. 2 and charged them both with two counts of theft, more than $2,500 but less than $30,000.
According to police, García, the owner of Spirit Home Builders LLC, and Jurado, refused to refund a man $21,325 after he learned that the bank had not financed the build of his new home.
The investigation into the case began nearly a year ago, on Feb. 21, 2020, and culminated in the arrests last week.
In an interview with The Monitor, García vehemently denied the charges.
“It is a high percentage, 80 to 90%, that get conditional approvals. He received instructions in what he needed to do in order to qualify and he knew from day one that he wasn’t approved. He needed to pay off debt and other stuff,” García said of the customer who filed charges.
Not only that, she says he signed a contract that stipulated the down payment was not refundable.
“That contract says the money is not refundable. You initialed every page of that contract and you signed that contract so it’s not like you didn’t know. We spent more than an hour explaining the contract. You did not sign a blind contract,” she said.
However, because of the pandemic, García said she decided to make an exception for the couple and refund the money.
“I don’t have to but I’m going to because I’m making an exception because of the pandemic and everything that’s going on,” she said.
But there was a catch, according to García, who said she needed to close on the sale of a home in Pharr in order to be able to refund the man.
“And he waited about a week or two and he went crazy and said ‘You’re not going to refund my money and I’m going to go to the police and Channel 5 News’ and he just blew up with a bunch of threats and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, is this really happening,'” García said.
According to police, Jurado told the man on Aug. 24 that he would be refunded on Aug. 25. Then, on Aug. 25, Jurado told him they were balancing their account and he needed to wait until Aug. 26 for his refund, according to an affidavit, which states that on Aug. 26 Jurado said the money would not be refunded.
García says that is not true.
“None of this would have happened if he would have just waited for me to close on the house and give him his money,” she said.
García, who said she has never been in trouble with the law, lamented that the whole incident has destroyed her business and left her in financial ruin.
She also says she may sue the Edinburg Police Department.
“We’re going to fight back and I can tell you that the Edinburg Police Department is going to have to face charges for manipulating evidence to obtain a warrant and is going to face charges for violating my civil rights,” she said.
García said she is not backing down and has a paper trail that disputes the narrative laid out in the police investigation.
“I want the truth to prevail. I want the truth to come out. I want my name to be clean,” she said. “And I want the people who have hurt us on purpose, I want them to pay.”
