The Love After Lockup franchise is no stranger to inmates with a little spending money. (Who could forget Gabby’s sugar daddy Chris?) However, new Love During Lockup inmate Chris Chipps will likely be setting the bar at new heights in terms of WE tv inmate sugar baes!
As we previously reported, Chris and his wife, Jade Chipps, have more than 300,000 combined subscribers on their TikTok accounts. Chris has bragged about being a provider for Jade, a claim that she has also boasted about.
Starcasm’s crack team of researchers decided to look under the hood of the Chipps’ finances, and we can confirm that Chris Chipps is indeed a HUGE provider for the family!
Chris bought Jade a house
According to Florida property records, Chris purchased a three-bedroom, 2,236 square foot home in Naples in October of 2020. The price of the house was $570,000.
The couple’s timing couldn’t have been better. Thanks to the recent real estate boom, the current estimates on the property range from $897,000 on Zillow to $938,000 on Redfin.
The new diggs and seemingly lavish lifestyle (see below) that Jade is living is quite the turnaround for her! The 33-year-old former flight attendant was actually evicted from her Florida apartment in 2008, according to court records.
The home purchase raises some major questions. We will start with how Chris was able to go through the purchase process in Florida while incarcerated in a prison in South Dakota.
He had some help thanks to his wife. Court records indicate that on October 15, Chris executed a durable power of attorney appointing Jade “as my Attorney in Fact for me and in my name, place and stead to do and perform all acts, deeds, matters and things whatsoever concerning” the Florida property.
How could Chris Chipps afford to buy a house?
Many might assume that Chris was able to purchase the Florida house from social media revenue. However, his TikTok channel only has 11,000 subscribers. Jade is the MUCH bigger influencer with just under 300,000 TikTok subscribers. So, if anyone was bringing in a lot of TikTok revenue, it would be Jade.
What appears to be the real answer to how Chris Chipps could afford a house can be found in court documents stemming from his 2014 and 2015 grand theft, burglary and identity theft convictions.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CUvJtf8p0f_/
The documents reveal Chris is one-quarter American Indian and is an enrolled member of the Mdewakanton Indian Tribe in Prairie Island, Minnesota. If the name of that tribe sounds familiar, it may be because a separate Mdewakanton reservation has made numerous headlines over the years as “the richest tribe in America” thanks to their ownership of the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel and Little Six Casino in Minnesota.
Chris is NOT part of the Shakopee Mdewakanton. However, the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Community also owns a casino — the Treasure Island Resort and Casino located in Welch, Minnesota.
It’s unclear how much Chris Chipps currently receives from the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Tribe. However, there is some financial information included in his appeal.
UPDATE – Jade Chipps states on Love During Lockup that Chris receives between $10,000 and $12,000 a month from the tribe.
Part of Chris’s reason for appealing his conviction was because his attorney did not dispute the prosecutor’s claim that Chris was “broke” when he committed the burglary and used the stolen credit cards in 2014. Prosecutors used Chris’s financial status to establish motive for the crimes. Chris argued that it would have been easy to prove he wasn’t broke at the time.
From the appeal:
According to the presentence investigation report conducted prior to sentencing in Lawrence County, Chipps reported an annual income of approximately $300,000 between tribal benefits and employment. Thus, Chipps concludes that “[h]is mother could have easily provided testimony to refute the State’s claim for motive.”
The appeal decision is footnoted with the following information:
Despite Chipps’s previously-reported income, Dr. Manlove’s report indicates the Tribe had reduced Chipps’s annual income to approximately $24,000 “around one year” prior to Dr. Manlove’s evaluation of Chipps in December 2014.
$24,000 a year may not seem like a lot, but it’s pretty good when you’re in prison with very few expenses!
Need your #FelonFriday fix? Meet new #LoveDuringLockup couple Jade and Chris Chipps! If they seem familiar it might be because they are TikTokers with more than 300,000 followers! 🤯 #LoveAfterLockup https://t.co/1OY2JZ6H7w
— Starcasm (@starcasm) May 6, 2023
Chris and Jade previously bought another house!
The Florida house was actually the second house purchased by Chris. He (and Jade-ish) bought a 1,792 square foot, 3 bedroom home in Sioux Falls in March of 2019. The purchase price on that property appears to have been $190,000.
Here are some photos of their South Dakota home from Jade’s Instagram:
It’s unclear if the couple had a change of heart, or if the property was meant to be a flip. There was a lot of work done of the house before the couple listed it for sale for $225,000 in September of 2020. By the time it sold in December, the price was up to $232,900.
Chris and Jade’s other stuff
In addition to the nice house in Florida, Jade is also enjoying a Cadillac SUV, a 2500HD Chevy Silverado pickup, a fifth-wheel camper, a Can-Am Maverick X3 off-road vehicle, multiple Harleys and more! Check out some more of Jade’s the couple’s stuff from their social media posts:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CgI2v5ts224/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CgN3HjRNJKw/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CgI0K2KsHky/
The new season of Love During Lockup is set to premiere some time in July.
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
