Scottish ‘aristocrats’ say they’re broke for real this time

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Andrea and Colin Chisholm III, the pair accused of collecting welfare from two states while living like royals, have traded their luxurious lakefront homes for jail cells.

After seven years of allegedly feigning poverty to benefits workers in Minnesota and Florida, the couple is now actually broke. The Chisholms say they can’t afford to post bail, which a Minnesota judge this week raised to $300,000 apiece, so they will remain behind bars while their welfare fraud case is pending in Hennepin County, Minn.

“They haven’t had money to speak of for years,” said Colin Chisholm’s attorney, Thomas Kelly. “He was eligible for welfare benefits in the state of Minnesota and in the state of Florida. They’ve been living off of loans and gifts and odd jobs for years. So he’s impoverished now and he’s been impoverished for a long time.”

They didn’t live like it. Investigators say Andrea Lynne Chisholm, 54, and Colin A.J. Chisholm, III, 62, who took in over $165,000 in public assistance from Minnesota, owned a $1.2 million, 83-foot yacht docked at Turnberry Isle in Aventura, Fla., and rented waterfront homes in Lighthouse Point and, after leaving the Sunshine State, Minnesota.

The couple had $3 million tucked away in various bank accounts, some of it from her Cavalier King Charles breeding business, which turned out a Westminster dog show award-winning pup, and some from his Caribbean television company, TCN Networks, Inc.

And they presented themselves as Scottish aristocrats, using the titles “Lord” and “Lady.”

The Chisholms were extradited to Minnesota to face charges after being deported from the Bahamas and arrested at Port Everglades, Fla., on April 1. In court documents requesting bail be raised from $150,000, prosecutors wrote that the couple fled the country to escape prosecution — a claim Kelly refuted.

According to prosecutors, the Chisholms in November told friends they were headed to Montana to help Andrea Chisholm’s ailing father.

They pulled their 7-year-old son out of school, abandoned their $1.6 million house on Minnesota’s Lake Minnetonka and left behind seven to nine dogs. They moved 27 boxes of financial documents into a neighbor’s basement without permission, the documents say.

In the Bahamas, neither of the two worked, but Colin Chisholm tried to solicit money to bring Grand Prix racing there and reopen a casino badly damaged in a hurricane. He attempted to arrange for his family to be smuggled to Turks and Caicos or Florida, according to witnesses who spoke to prosecutors.

All those schemes fell apart when Bahamian officials revoked the Chisholm’s tourist visas and sent them back to the U.S. Since then, the couple’s son has been in the care of family members.

Kelly said the Chisholms were not trying to escape prosecution. Instead, Colin Chisholm returned to the Bahamas to try to save TCN Networks, which, he said, was “on its last leg.” When he found out warrants had been issued for his and Andrea’s arrest, Colin Chisholm planned on returning to the U.S. to turn himself in, but was delayed by a serious illness.

“It’s ironic that he left and then a couple months later, they brought charges,” Kelly said. “But we were aware of the potential, the very good potential, of charges being brought for months before.”

Colin Chisholm has admitted it was possible inaccurate information was provided to benefits workers in Minnesota and Florida, his attorney said. And if that’s proven, it could justify a guilty plea, Kelly said. He added that Colin Chisholm wants to get the case resolved.

“My client had a dream,” the attorney said, referring to TCN Networks. “He chased the dream for a long time and was totally invested in this concept, and it was his undoing.”