Report: Paxtons' Blind Trust Put $600,000 Into a Convicted Fraudster's Business. What the Records Show

Ken Paxton has made fighting fraud a centerpiece of his record as attorney general. A new report raises questions about who his own money was doing business with.

A blind trust set up for Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, put $600,000 into a construction materials business started by Scott Sherman, a North Texas home builder who had finished a federal prison sentence for mortgage fraud four years earlier, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica reported Friday. The news organizations found the investment in previously unreleased records from the 2023 impeachment investigation of the attorney general.

What the records show

Sherman pleaded guilty in 2014 for his role in a scheme that inflated home prices to get larger loans on more than two dozen properties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the report said. After the trust's investment, Wildcatter Sand Services and Grayson County Sand and Gravel, which he built with his father, grew into a larger enterprise with a sand mine in Denison and a concrete plant in Gunter.

The trust was meant to keep the Paxtons' personal investments separate from their work as public officials. Their friend Chip Loper agreed to manage it without taking "any instructions regarding investment matters," according to the incorporation documents. But the records suggest the Paxtons were not fully walled off, the report said:

• The Paxtons claimed more than $93,000 in itemized losses from two Wildcatter companies on their 2020 joint federal tax return.

• Angela Paxton served on an advisory board of Wildcatter Materials beginning in 2022, a role she described on financial disclosures as "non-governing." She was still on it as of her last disclosure in 2025.

• Wildcatter companies wired the trust 15 payments between January and June 2023 totaling more than $83,000, while some of those companies owed local property taxes. Two of the companies later went delinquent on nearly $200,000 in 2023 taxes, and local governments sued to collect.

• On May 19, 2023, a week before the impeachment vote, the trust wired $9,000 to the firm of attorney Mitch Little, who later represented Paxton at trial. The report said it is unclear whether Wildcatter money paid for legal work.

The news organizations said their records are limited, and they cannot say with certainty why the payments were made.

The vote on dust complaints

Neighbors of the Gunter plant complained to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality about dust, and the agency issued violation notices in 2021 and 2022. Then-Sen. Drew Springer later filed a bill allowing TCEQ to set aside complaints from people who file more than five unsubstantiated ones in seven years. Angela Paxton voted for it.

Her spokesperson, Matt Welch, said the bill had bipartisan support and was needed "to stop a small group of environmental activists from wasting taxpayer dollars by weaponizing the complaint process." He said she did not recuse because the bill did not concern a specific company, her board role "carried no decision-making authority," and she was unaware of complaints against Wildcatter. He also said she did not know of Sherman's criminal history.

What Paxton says

Ken Paxton did not answer detailed questions about the investment or whether he knew of Sherman's conviction. He has previously said he follows ethics laws. Sherman did not respond. Angela Paxton filed for divorce last year, the report noted.

Paxton was acquitted in his 2023 impeachment trial, and a federal Justice Department probe of whistleblower allegations was dropped in 2025. Ethics experts quoted in the report, including Richard Painter, who was President George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer and has criticized President Donald Trump, said the dealings undercut Paxton's anti-fraud message. Another expert said U.S. Senate rules would require a senator with a blind trust to have no knowledge of its investments.

Why it matters now

Paxton is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in a close race against Democrat James Talarico. Both men launched dueling bus tours as early voting began, and Paxton has kept a high profile as attorney general, including his new lawsuit against OpenAI.

Voters will weigh this report alongside everything else they know. Some will see an old story dressed up days before an election; others will see a pattern. Either way, the standard is not partisan. "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches" (Proverbs 22:1). A man who prosecutes fraud should hold his own books to the same light. Paxton has a chance to answer these questions plainly before early voting ends Friday, and Texans would be well served if he did.