They may be the biggest fraudsters in the pool and spa industry — according to several lawsuits against them — but they’ve escaped criminal charges in the state of Florida.

Legacy Pools owners Charles “Chad” Black, wife Kristin Black, as well as a slew of others, have been named as defendants in a pool building fraud scheme of “staggering proportions,” according to several complaints filed in Brevard County.

“Rather than perform the work they were paid for, the defendants prioritized their own greed — fraudulently misappropriating tens of millions of dollars. The defendants purchased status in their church, vehicles, home improvements, designer clothing, and international travels with the construction funds instead of honestly performing the work,” one such complaint states.

Blake Stewart, of Stewart Law, is representing multiple families who have filed lawsuits against Legacy Pools. He believes that more than 600 families were defrauded of tens of millions by the couple and their affiliates.

In the lawsuits filed last year, he provides evidence that Black and his wife ran a similar scheme in both Virginia and North Carolina, until those states revoked their licenses. They are accused of stealing massive amounts of money from Florida customers from 2018 to 2023.

Nonetheless, state prosecutors recently announced they were compelled to drop criminal charges against the company.

Regarding the dropped criminal charges, state Attorney William M. Gladson wrote: “The law requires the state to prove that at the time the parties entered into the contract, the builder had no intention of ever performing. Evidence of actual performance of some portion of the contract (as we have in this case) negates an intent not to perform at the inception of the contract.”

That means the cases must be tried on a civil level, which is sure to be a disappointment to the hundreds of families who paid thousands for virtually nothing.

Because it is true that in most cases the pool building company did carry out “some portion” of building a pool. According to the court filings, for an average price tag of about $50,000, customers could hope to get a fairly large hole dug in their backyards. After that, they were lucky if they ever saw the pool building company again, leaving the dirt under their homes’ foundations susceptible to erosion.

The lawsuits allege the scheme was a lot bigger and involved a great deal more than the personal corruption of Chad and Kristin Black. It also involved leaders and members of one of the largest mega-churches in the country, Elevation Church, which boasts an average weekly attendance of 26,000, and has 22 campuses dotted mostly across the South.

According to the lawsuit, Chad and Kristin Black gave a substantial portion of their construction funds to leaders of Elevation Church in exchange for membership in the church’s elite inner circle, which came with certain perks. Meanwhile, according to the suits, Elevation Church leaders knew they were receiving ill-gotten “charitable donations,” from Florida customers who had been swindled.

Melbourne Branch Elevation Church Pastor Chad Cooper and his wife, Jenn, are friends of the Blacks, and the couples used the funds to go together on lavish vacations to Greece and the Maldives, and the Blacks gifted the Coopers with a sports utility vehicle among other items.

When members of Cooper ’s congregation said anything to object, protesting that these luxuries were the result of people’s stolen life savings, Cooper “shut these individuals down and bullied anyone in his congregation that said or posted anything bad about defendant Chad Black,” lawsuits state.

Furthermore, Cooper used the church credit card (so he wouldn’t have to pay taxes) to purchase construction materials for Legacy Pools in order to benefit from airline miles, the lawsuits state. If Cooper had not extended millions of dollars of credit to Black, “the coconspirators would not have been able to ensnare as many victims as they did.”

The lawsuits insist that the Blacks have a long history of theft and fraud. Prior to their most recent actions in Florida, they took construction deposits through fraud from unwary consumers in Virginia and North Carolina, where they ran bogus landscaping and pool building businesses.

In both states, the Blacks’contractor’s licenses were revoked, and when the Blacks declared bankruptcy, the states paid the Blacks’ judgements against them from the states’ victims’ recovery funds.

Furthermore, the suits state that Chad Black was initiated into the criminal contracting business by his parents, Matthew and Susan Black.

In at least one instance, the senior Black admitted to using construction funds for Botox for his wife, mortgage payments, car payments, and many other personal purchases.