Home buyers and home sellers at a Charlotte real estate company are asking “Where’s the money?”, after they say the company stuck them with months of unpaid mortgages and bad credit ratings.

“This has been a nightmare since day one,” said Todd Moss, as he walked 6NEWS through the home he’s renting from Charlotte Home Solutions and owner Bill Keaton.

Moss explains he heard about the company’s rent-to-own program on an early morning TV infomercial, and his deal with Keaton and CHS calls for more than $5,000 of his rent payments to be applied to his purchase of the home.

But 6NEWS found the company office closed down, leaving Moss and dozens of other CHS clients without a lot of answers.

"When I walk into the office, all the furniture is gone in the building“, worried Moss. "I just want to know, what's up with the money?"

6NEWS confronted Keaton, the company owner, with those concerns outside his Union County townhouse.

6NEWS: "You seem to be the person with the answers -- and you don't want to talk about it..." Keaton: (No answer).

6NEWS: "What happened to the thousand of dollars that these people wrote in checks to buy these houses. That's a question you can answer -- only you can answer..."

Keaton: (No answer).

But the 6NEWS Investigators also discover that Keaton has apparently already answered that question under oath, after a former business partner at Charlotte Home Solutions reported to Matthews police that Keaton tried to pay off a personal loan by embezzling $60,000 from a company checking account. 6NEWS has learned that Keaton eventually paid off the loan with his own money, and the police investigation was closed. But not before Keaton gave a sworn statement, obtained by 6NEWS, saying “I knowingly used the (Charlotte Home Solutions) bank account for unauthorized, unapproved personal use.“

Keaton: "I can't talk about that right now.“

6NEWS: “Why not?”

Keaton: “I just can't talk about that right now..."

6NEWS also found at least two dozen other complaints and lawsuits, with clients of Charlotte Home Solutions naming the company and Bill Keaton.  Many say their credit was destroyed after mortgages were overdue and unpaid by Keaton for months at a time.

"Where did all that money go?”, asks Paul Smith, another CHS client. “Did it go in his pocket?"

Smith tells 6NEWS by phone that when he moved from his old home in Charlotte to Texas, Charlotte Home Solutions was supposed to pay the mortgage and take care of the upkeep while CHS found him a tenant willing to buy. Now, before and after photos e-mailed to 6NEWS by Smith show a vacant house in disrepair. And copies of Smith’s mortgage statements show month after month of bad checks written by Charlotte Home Solutions, and what Smith calls a “ruined credit rating.“

"I'm five months behind (on my mortgage), and they're talking about foreclosure,“ said Smith. “Short of him paying back (our) money, maybe jail time's what he needs -- if he wants to go around swindling people like he does."

Keaton responded, “If you're a seller -- there's probably 30 out there -- or a tenant buyer, just hang in there. We're trying to get everything worked out for you."

But 6NEWS also has Keaton’s internal e-mails from Charlotte Home Solutions, and they tell a different story. A company employee wonders “What is going on with all the mortgages that are being returned?“ In another e-mail, she also alerts Keaton that clients are “aware and not real happy” about unpaid taxes on their properties.“

Keaton’s e-mail response? Two words. “F_ _ _ them.“

Now the North Carolina Attorney General’s office is also asking “Where’s the money?“. 6NEWS has learned that they’re looking at some of the same documents that we looked at, and talking to Keaton’s former co-workers at Charlotte Home Solutions. The Attorney General’s office is also sending out letters -- not just to clients who complained, but to all the company’s home buyers and home sellers, to see if they’ve had problems, too.