Jose Santos Coria doesn't know if the police still follow him. He knows he's still suspected of many things, not all of which he denies.
It's true, he says, that he came to the United States as a fugitive from Mexico, charged there with the death of two people in a car crash in 1996. Find him at his shop on Singleton Boulevard — or at one of his many construction sites in West Dallas — and he may even tell you he once carried tens of thousands of dollars across the border to finance his new life in Dallas.
It's a lie, he says, that he led an organized crime ring here — though he pleaded to a lesser charge after Denton police accused him of that in 2009. Police said he set up burglaries across Texas and built houses to launder piles of cash secreted beneath his bedroom floor.
The 72-year-old businessman hadn't heard that he's a person of interest to U.S. investigators on both sides of the border.
Coria is used to such questions. After years of arrests and accusations, they follow him everywhere.
Everywhere, that is, except Dallas City Hall, where Coria has become one of the city's most prolific buyers of lots intended for affordable housing.
Since 2012, the year he pleaded guilty, Coria has purchased three dozen lots from the city, mostly in West Dallas. He buys the land cheap for $5,000 a plot but allocates millions of dollars for construction, offering contradictory explanations for the origins of his funds.
The land is intended to provide homes to low-income families. But Coria has often sold to his relatives who were already property owners, records show.
He's done it all with the City Council's blessing, and few questions asked at City Hall.
* * *
In a sombrero and scuffed shoes, Coria walked into his barn-box store one October afternoon, carrying a contract for a house around the block that he'd just sold.
Customers crowd Discount Construction Material, where cheap screws and shingles stuff the shelves. Its proprietor now owns properties on nearly every block in the square-mile neighborhood that flanks his shop.
He owns more homes down Singleton, close to the downtown skyline, and more down the Trinity River.
Coria took a seat on a little chair near a discounted toilet. He reflected on success and the trouble that's come with it.
Everybody wants to know how he's made his money, he said.
"The police officer himself ... told me with an interpreter: How was it possible that I, a Mexican without studies, without speaking English, had more money and earned more than they did?" Coria said in Spanish.
He was referring to an interrogation — one of several he's endured since leaving the tropical forests and ranchland of southwestern Mexico for the United States. Coria grew up poor in that country, he said.
He was determined not to remain so.
By 1996, he had scrabbled together a string of bodegas, ranches and taxis near the village of Angao, where stray dogs roam the rare paved street. He was chauffeuring a couple along a curvy road that year, he said, when a melon truck ran his taxi off the side of a mountain. His passengers were killed, and he was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide.
He disappeared before he could stand trial, Mexican court records show.
"I did come fleeing," Coria said.
He and his wife went first to North Carolina, where his brothers lived. Coria kept a low profile there, and the homicide charges in Mexico apparently did not interfere with his legal resident status in the United States — a status he maintains despite all that's happened since.
Nor did Coria's fugitive status prevent him from making trips back to Mexico, he said. He sold his businesses and two large ranches there and carried the proceeds north across the border, he said. He then carried $10,000 or so at a time to avoid declaring the money to customs, he would later tell police.
After a few years stateside, Coria moved to Dallas and opened Discount Construction Material. It was one of two building supply shops he owned by 2009 — the year a wave of shingle heists swept construction sites and Coria came to the attention of half a dozen U.S. law enforcement agencies.
* * *
At first, the thefts seemed like coincidence. Towers of shingles lay barely guarded along highways. Not glamorous loot, but police estimated a truckload of shingles might be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
And the thieves seemed well-organized.
"They stake your hours of business, they send a lookout to watch the place, then they all start pouring in," said Cynthia Reynolds Hale, manager of a Denton supply store that lost two truckloads of shingles.
Mike Sweet, a Denton police investigator, noticed that hauls from the Denton theft — like other shingle thefts in Wichita Falls, Fort Worth and Lancaster — all turned up at one of two supply shops in Dallas.
"The common denominator in these locations is Jose Santos Coria," Sweet wrote in his case notes.
The Dallas, Denton and Wichita Falls police departments teamed up with the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate the thefts, surveilling burglars for hours before arresting them in sting operations in at least two cities.
Investigators drew up a chart of the suspected crime ring. At the bottom, immigrants who stole for a few hundred dollars a night. At the top, Coria.
At least three thieves told police that they'd been threatened: Keep quiet, or their bosses would harm them or their families.
A crew leader told Denton detectives that "threats had been made against those who are incarcerated in reference to making statements against Coria," according to a case narrative in Coria's court file.
A Denton police report said the same man was so frightened to share information that he spoke in shallow breaths, "his hands shook and he had his feet wrapped around the chair legs."
In interviews with The Dallas Morning News, Coria strongly denied knowing the thieves — let alone threatening them.
* * *
On July 19, 2009, a police pickup truck pulled up outside Discount Construction Material. Officers had raided Coria's other shop a few weeks earlier, cataloging stacks of shingles and lumber, appliances, cabinetry, windows, cases of caulking and screws.
"Dallas PD was able to confirm a large portion of the contents in the warehouse and yard to have been stolen from multiple jurisdictions," said a Wichita Falls police report from that raid.
Police detained Coria and drove to his home — a custom-built brick house with painted fleur-de-lis fences, much nicer than surrounding blocks in West Dallas.
Officers went through the front door yelling "Search warrant!" Coria said his young grandson wet his pants in fright.
"Coria said that he has no money at his house," a Denton police report noted. "He said he is a poor man who has to work every day."
In the master bedroom, police found purses with their price tags still attached, new shoes and furs. In another room, roaches and earwigs scurried through papers scattered around the floor. Coria's real estate records were among items seized.
In Coria's bedroom closet, an officer noticed a button-up shirt with a bulging pocket. Inside was a white bank envelope, and inside that were 150 hundred-dollar bills.
Other shirt pockets hid more envelopes. Police found more in the bathroom, and yet more under the floorboards. Nearly all the envelopes were stuffed with $15,000.
"Judge — we seized $375,000+ CASH out of his house on Sunday," Denton Police Detective Rachel Fleming wrote after Coria was arrested on money laundering and theft charges. "He is a flight risk with MANY more charges coming."
He was indicted on one charge: engaging in organized crime.
* * *
In interrogations, Coria first said he borrowed the hidden cash from his brothers, according to the Denton police report. Then he said it came from the sales of his assets in Mexico.
Like other investigators on the case, Fleming didn't believe a word.
"He's making his money from selling stolen goods, and then he's turning around and putting that money in property to try to legitimize it," she told The News this year. "Money always leaves a trail."
In her investigation, Fleming found out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a file on Coria. An ICE agent told her that visitors to the United States had been listing empty lots he owned as their final destination, according to records in his court file.
And the envelopes seized in 2009 weren't the last of Coria's hidden cash. Two years later, while awaiting trial, he was stopped at DFW International Airport carrying $32,000 cash back from a visit to Mexico, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration investigator's affidavit.
He had declared the cash at customs, but a drug dog alerted to it, the investigator wrote. Agents went to Coria's house and found another $80,000 hidden in a TV cabinet. A dog flagged those bills, too.
A special agent asked Coria if he used drug money to fund home construction.
"Coria avoided eye contact, looked down and shrugged," DEA task force officer Scott Hansford noted.
"They accused me of being the greatest smuggler," Coria told The News in one of several interviews this fall. He said police turned off a recorder at key points in his interrogations, lied in reports and probably fabricated evidence.
He said the first stash of cash had come from sales of his properties in Mexico, and that the drug-tainted cash in his house was all profits from his store. He pointed out, correctly, that drug dogs sometimes sniff out cash that's had only passing contact with narcotics.
And he said that for all the accusations, drug charges never materialized and his punishment in Denton was light.
Court records show the state of Texas and the U.S. government returned about a third of the cash they seized from Coria in 2009 and 2011, keeping the rest. He accuses the authorities of wrongfully taking his money and exaggerating the amount that they seized from his house.
He cut a deal in October 2012. Denton prosecutors agreed to drop the organized crime charge in return for his guilty plea to theft. He would serve probation for five years, but no prison time.
"Why did the judge set me free if I'm so like that?" he said.
The conviction didn't slow him down. That same year, Coria brought his real estate business to Dallas City Hall.
* * *
"I have worked in everything," Coria said, sitting in a small chair between the aisles of Discount Construction Material as his workers closed up for the day.
But his years in business — from taxis to bodegas — taught him something, he said.
"If I'm a fruit man, the fruit rots," he said.
He waved a sales contract for a newly built house. "This, it doesn't rot."
Often, Dallas works with nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity to develop affordable housing. The city acquires empty land from owners who fall behind on their taxes and sells it to developers for $5,000 a plot — on condition that a home be promptly built and sold to a low-income buyer.
"If they have not worked with us before, we want to make sure we check them out thoroughly," housing director Bernadette Mitchell told City Council members, who approve all sales to developers, during a review of the land bank program last year.
Mitchell did not respond to multiple inquiries from The News about Coria's involvement in the program.
No one at City Hall appears to have checked Coria's criminal history when he first applied to buy land. He didn't owe the city any taxes and had built houses before. The council approved him as an affordable housing developer eight weeks later.
Coria told The News he wanted to help his "Mexican countrymen" buy homes in West Dallas, a historically Hispanic neighborhood that is fast becoming prime real estate for rich developers.
On July 19, 2012 — exactly three years after his first arrest — the city sold Coria three lots near the mouth of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge that linked downtown Dallas to a planned development of upscale restaurants.
He built two houses and sold them to his son and daughter, who both already owned other properties and co-directed Coria's real estate company.
The city told him not to sell to relatives again, Coria said. But property records show that he sold affordable houses to his grandson and another son a few months ago.
To date, the city has sold Coria 36 lots, all but one in West Dallas. Records show he's sold seven lots with houses to people outside of his family for at least $120,000 each.
But four others have gone to his relatives. And most of Coria's affordable housing developments remain vacant land long past the construction timetables he agreed to — even as the program is running out of land for other West Dallas developers.
* * *
Despite his criminal history, despite the hidden envelopes of $100 bills, despite sales to his relatives, city officials say Coria isn't necessarily violating the rules of a program meant to create homes for working-class families.
"He can sell to his brother, his daughter, his wife — as long as they are low-income," said the city's land bank manager, Terry Williams, whose tiny department manages hundreds of affordable housing developments. "We encourage that."
In his paperwork, Coria told the city his children and their spouses support families on $75,000 or less a year, and were therefore eligible.
What he didn't mention was that he and his children are all founding directors of Coria Corp., which owns 16 residential properties around Dallas.
And property records show three of Coria's children, along with their spouses, all owned larger residences when they bought affordable homes from him.
Williams didn't know that either but said a city-approved buyer only needs to live in a house on the day of the sale.
"That's probably something that needs to be modified down the road," Williams said, blaming a state law for any loopholes in the program.
Williams said he learned of Coria's theft conviction only after The News began asking questions about Coria. When told of the homicide charges in Mexico — which have since expired — the hidden cash and money laundering accusations, Williams said the city might look into them.
"People accuse people of all kinds of things," he said, "so I'd have to have pretty good proof."
* * *
Between the land Coria bought from City Hall and the land he won at auctions or purchased privately, he and his family corporation own 58 residential lots in Dallas amassed in the last decade, records show. Another 25 properties are in the names of his children, for whom Coria said he pays taxes and provides construction materials.
And he's building houses faster than ever before. Dallas permit records show that Coria and Coria Corp. have spent $2.7 million on construction since 2009, when police accused him of laundering hidden cash through construction.
His children, alone or with their spouses, have spent another $1.1 million, records show. And the Corias have secured permits for at least another $1 million in construction, bringing the family house-building budget to nearly $5 million since his arrest seven years ago.
Asked how he paid for it, Coria said he sells his properties for big profits.
But county records show he doesn't flip many. Nearly every property Coria bought is still owned by him or a close relative. Coria and his corporation have sold just 14 Dallas properties — some from the land bank and some not — to people outside his family. Two of his sales came last week, when he closed on an affordable house and an empty lot.
And in half the sales to non-relatives, Coria or his company financed the buyer's mortgage, according to deed records.
Later in the interview, Coria changed his explanation, saying he pays for construction with profits from Discount Construction Material — by buying goods cheap and out-pricing national rivals like Home Depot. But he said he didn't know how much he earned through his store or spent on construction.
Coria's business records were last made public in 2009, when investigators got a hold of a tax return wildly out of sync with his bank statements, construction activities and the stockpiles of cash.
"Jose Santos Coria: Living the American Dream on $73,000 per year gross income" is the title of a government slideshow presentation tucked into his court file — presumably shown to a grand jury and illustrated with photos of Coria's properties and hidden cash.
Alejandro Perez, an accountant who prepared that tax return for Coria and still works for him, told The News that Coria funded his construction through profits from his store and a $400,000-plus loan. But Perez said he didn't believe his client had spent as much on construction as city permits indicate.
* * *
Speaking anonymously, current and former federal officials told The News that Coria remains a person of interest, although they stopped short of saying what their interest is in him.
Coria acknowledged that authorities have often suspected him of drug trafficking, but he repeatedly denied any criminal entanglements here or in Mexico. He said he was unaware that federal agents have an interest in him.
Coria's longtime friend, Enrique Chavez, described Coria as a decent man, though not a sophisticated one. Chavez, who runs a ballroom in West Dallas, said his friend is "a genius when it comes to handling money" yet "terrible with numbers" — an entrepreneur who spits out calculations in his head but relies on his sons to write down phone digits.
Chavez said he's warned Coria not to keep so much cash around.
"Cash generates suspicions, and I won't lie to you, I've had my own suspicions," said Chavez, who called himself Coria's personal adviser. "But I would say I'm almost sure, 90 percent sure, he's not involved in dirty money."
But allegations have followed Coria since his first arrest.
In a series of undercover operations in 2010, the Texas Department of Public Safety sold Coria and his relatives what they believed were stolen goods, the agency alleged in a report. No one was charged in that case.
Nor did the DEA agents charge Coria after seizing the drug-tainted cash in 2011, though he did spend several weeks in jail.
He was back in a cell in 2014, when U.S. border protection agents stopped him after a trip to Mexico. They were concerned his theft conviction might make him ineligible to return to the United States, according to records in Coria's Denton court file. But he was eventually cleared.
For his problems in the United States, Coria again blamed biased police and rivals jealous of his success, which is evident across West Dallas.
* * *
Coria walked from his store through the blocks flanking Singleton, passing land he'd bought from the city, new brick houses he'd built and yet more still underway.
He walked past some construction workers sawing in the yard and into one of the houses he built. He showed off sun-drenched rooms with high ceilings and intricate trim — much nicer than anything Habitat for Humanity builds, he said.
Long after leaving Mexico, he said, he's become a benefactor in his village — sending money back for the elderly and disabled in Angao. Now many in Dallas see him that way too. Kitchen workers and house painters with small children — sometimes his buyers show up on his porch with chocolates or other gifts of gratitude.
"Where I live they didn't even want to give me a lease and you trusted in us and you gave us the house," one buyer told Coria, he said, as a smile lifted his little mustache.
"If I have many, why can't others have one?" he said.
And Coria's many houses now extend beyond West Dallas.
A few miles southeast, he has bought up consecutive blocks of dilapidated houses and overgrown lots and in their place is building homes larger and grander than anything in West Dallas.
These houses will be for him and his family, Coria says. They are his finest by far: iron fences, tipped silver and yellow, ringing Coria's gazebo, Coria's private loading dock and Coria's herd of miniature horses. Down the street, the family name is welded to his brother's gate in ornate letters.
But behind these estates, on a side street where loose dogs charge at cars, a small lot he bought from City Hall last year still sits empty.
It's his first affordable housing development in southern Dallas. He was supposed to have built a house on it months ago and sold it to a low-income family by now.
This fall, his ponies sometimes grazed on the weeds.
Special contributor Alfredo Corchado contributed to this report.
