ST. LOUIS — Clad in a white shirt and striped red tie, Howard Hughes III offers a roomful of children an inspiring message about entrepreneurship and people who pull themselves out of poverty.
“These are some successful people in their careers and in their lives,†he says on a video posted prominently on the website of . “And they all grew up in similar neighborhoods like you. They all grew up in single-family households like you. They didn’t have the resources. Their parents weren’t rich. Whatever you’re dealing with right now, I want you to figure it out. You have everything you need inside of you.â€
As rousing music builds in the background, the undated video cuts to a scene outside the now-closed Clay Elementary School, where Hughes shows off his ride: a 2017 neon yellow Mercedes-Benz G550 Wagon 4X4 Squared — a luxury SUV with a base price topping $225,000.
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The kids love it, climbing into the driver’s seat and dancing in the vehicle with the sunroof open.
Two months ago, that Mercedes showed up in the federal indictment of Connie Bobo, a St. Charles woman accused of defrauding a federal child nutrition program out of $11 million and using the money to buy real estate and luxury goods.
Bobo, who ran the nonprofit and claimed about $21 million in federal meal reimbursements from 2019 through 2022, was charged in October with wire fraud, identify theft and obstruction of an official proceeding. The Post-Dispatch first reported her nonprofit’s large federal reimbursements and some of her real estate purchases in November 2022.
But the indictment revealed another character in Bobo’s orbit — a “romantic partner†who prosecutors say accepted $1.4 million in stolen food program money from Bobo, using nearly $212,000 to buy the Mercedes SUV.
While the indictment identifies Bobo’s partner only as “H.H.,†other public records confirm it’s Hughes. Hughes hasn’t been charged with a crime, but the U.S. Attorney’s office lists the luxury vehicle among the property — mostly homes and commercial real estate Bobo purchased — that it planned to seize as compensation for the food program fraud.
The luxury SUV was a perfect prop for Hughes’ carefully curated image as a successful entrepreneur, business coach, “best-selling†author, real estate developer and “high net worth wealth manager.â€
But lawsuits scattered through the courts indicate a different reality: a business dispute, a failed restaurant and a 2022 eviction from a small, $609-per-month apartment in O’Fallon, Missouri.
There’s no indication of any of that on Hughes’ websites and social media accounts. Instead, he highlights his work speaking to kids about entrepreneurship and says he worked with ºüÀêÊÓƵ Public Schools on a student essay contest in 2019. More recently, he claimed he was working with developers in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and had plans for large developments in East ºüÀêÊÓƵ, as well as in Michigan.
“You never buy luxury cars, brand new cars, until you have an investment vehicle that can pay for that for you,†he said in a video offering business advice posted on social media. “I would never buy a car and spend my own money to buy that car.â€
Hughes did not return multiple phone and email messages. He couldn’t be reached at any of his listed addresses. The Mercedes wasn’t there either.
The man from Kalamazoo
Hughes came to Missouri in 2009 to attend Lincoln University in Jefferson City, according to his online profile and He grew up on the north side of Kalamazoo, Michigan, he said in that interview, describing himself as a “troubled youth†from a “broken home.†He only scored 13 points out of a possible 36 on the ACT, he said, and was suspended from school.
“In this area there’s not a lot of resources available to people, that we knew about, at least,†Hughes said. “Making those resources accessible was always a priority to me. I just didn’t know what was available to us to be able to achieve more.â€
Things began to turn around when he went to college — the first time, he said, he had left Michigan. He got good grades and played football.
“That’s when things kind of got started for me,†he said in the interview.
STL TV was talking to Hughes about his book and his work promoting entrepreneurship to young people. Specifically, he was promoting an essay contest at the time, one that he said ºüÀêÊÓƵ Public Schools had partnered with him on. The winners were to be announced at SLPS headquarters downtown, according to the segment.
“I want to push entrepreneurship extremely hard,†Hughes said. “The reason why I want to do that is because I want the youth to be able to know that they can create tables and allow other people to come up and have a seat.â€
In addition to the 2019 essay contest, his website includes a picture of him speaking at the Wilkinson Early Childhood Center, another SLPS school. Plus, there’s the video of him outside Clay Elementary showing off the Mercedes.
But that video, though posted just a few months ago, is dated. SLPS closed Clay in the summer of 2021, and a school district spokesman said the district was “unable to locate any record of Mr. Hughes ever having a formal relationship with the District as a whole.â€
“Further, we can’t find any indication he’s had any involvement with any of our more than 60 schools in several years,†SLPS spokesman George Sells said.
‘I don’t see Howard any longer’
Search online for “Howard Hughes Consulting†and a Sunset Hills office building address pops up. It’s the same address where Hughes says on his LinkedIn page he began working for a business brokerage after he graduated from Lincoln.
An employee in the Sunset Hills office said in December he recalled when Hughes worked for a business brokerage that used to lease space in the building, but it had been several years since he last saw him.
Since 2017, Hughes has also been a licensed accident, health and sickness insurance producer in Missouri. It’s unclear if he uses the license.
Online, he mostly talks about real estate and market investments and his work mentoring and buying and selling businesses. His A one-hour financial literacy course costs the same.
Public records show Hughes, 33, worked, at least for a time, with Bobo, 44. In October 2021, he incorporated Howard Hughes Trucking and Construction with her, listing its address as the $975,000 home on Spring Mill Creek Road in St. Charles that Bobo used her nonprofit to purchase.
Bobo is listed as a contact for the now-dissolved Howard Hughes Foundation and for a company, HHIII Eats LLC, Hughes used to buy Cappuccino’s, a now closed restaurant in an O’Fallon shopping center, in March 2022.
And on the Amazon webpage where Hughes’ 2018 book, “,†is for sale, the only review is a glowing one from Bobo.
“Howard is a genius at what he does,†she wrote in March 2021, when her nonprofit was pulling in over $1 million a month in federal food aid money. “This was one of the easiest books I’ve read yet packed with so much helpful information. He truly demonstrates his passion for business development and helping entrepreneurs succeed in this book!â€
How he and Bobo crossed paths isn’t entirely clear. She and her attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Debra Irvin, a construction consultant Bobo hired after spending $2.2 million buying the empty Bridgeton Circuit City building on Natural Bridge Road near Interstate 270, said she remembers Bobo mentioning Hughes. Irvin didn’t work for Bobo long after she grew skeptical of the feasibility of Bobo’s plans to rehab the large commercial building.
But early on, around February 2022, Irvin, a former Berkeley city manager, arranged a meeting with Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs and Bobo.
At the meeting, Bobo mentioned she had a friend, “Howard,†and said she had already given him $800,000 for “consulting and investments,†Irvin recalled. But then Bobo said she had a new construction manager, Lozell Stiles.
“She said, ‘I don’t see Howard any longer,’†Irvin remembers. “‘Mr. Stiles is taking over.’â€
The project never came together. And the government says it plans to seize the former Circuit City building.
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Hughes appears to have started having money problems following some major purchases in early 2022.
In March of that year, he bought Cappuccino’s, the O’Fallon restaurant, from Wendy and Lewis Meyerson. But only a few months later he stopped paying rent and the landlord, a company tied to Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s real estate empire, sued him. The landlord and the Meyersons eventually won judgments against him.
To recoup their money, Kroenke’s lawyers set out looking for the 2017 Mercedes SUV. It was the only one of several vehicles registered to Hughes, including two other Mercedes sedans, that didn’t have a lien on it. The St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department, assigned by the court to find the car, couldn’t find it when they were scoping out his O’Fallon apartment in the late summer and early fall.
Meanwhile, Hughes was dealing with other problems. According to court filings, he spent nearly $200,000 in January 2022 on two Peterbilt semi trucks for his Howard Hughes Trucking and Construction, the company he started with Bobo in October 2021.
Then he went into business with another woman with whom he was having a relationship. That woman, D’Ann McIntyre, who owned a shoe store in the Delmar Loop and a home health care business, sued Hughes in May 2023.
McIntyre and her husband alleged Hughes defamed them in online postings by calling them “scammers†and claiming they stole his semi trucks. McIntyre said in court documents that Hughes had gifted the trucks to her, and she retitled them under her company, Billions Logistics. She and Hughes were in a relationship between October 2021 and May 2023, according to her lawsuit. Hughes only began posting the claims about her stealing the trucks when she broke off their relationship and returned to her husband, the lawsuit says. McIntyre couldn’t be reached for comment.
In his own lawsuit, filed shortly after McIntyre’s, Hughes alleges McIntyre had asked to borrow the trucks in July 2022 for Billions Logistics, which Hughes said he was mentoring. The next month, he asked for the trucks back, but McIntyre told him they were hers now and he could repurchase them for $70,000, according to his lawsuit.
Hughes claimed he lost out on a $1.8 million contract with an East ºüÀêÊÓƵ company, Zade Civil Construction and Trucking, because he couldn’t get the trucks back.
Zade Civil Construction and Trucking’s address is the same one that Hughes now lists for his consulting business. And Zade, owned by former University of Illinois and NFL football player Dana Howard, was also involved in Bobo’s Bridgeton project in late 2021, according to city building permit applications.
Zade’s owner, Howard, didn’t respond to messages seeking comment. A receptionist at the office on Martin Luther King Drive in East ºüÀêÊÓƵ said Hughes comes in occasionally to meet with Howard but that she hadn’t seen him in a while.
‘Frontin’ and fakin’’
Hughes listed the Zade address in an undated press release on his website announcing he had hired a chief operating officer for his consulting business: Madam Khadijah Tou Tou, who also has an online persona offering motivational speaking and life coaching services.
Tou Tou, in a brief phone conversation last month, said she was a teacher in addition to her work with Hughes, who she called “absolutely wonderful.â€
“Howard is a beacon of the community and he’s just, he’s a person where if you are broken or torn down, that’s going to be the person that helps, definitely helps build you up,†she said.
She suddenly ended the phone call with the Post-Dispatch, saying she would call back. She didn’t, and could not be reached for further comment.
Hughes has mostly stopped posting new content on his website and social media pages since Bobo’s indictment was unsealed in late October. In August, he posted a picture of the Mercedes in the Hyde Park neighborhood of north ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
“We all have the same 24 hours in a day,†he wrote. “What I do with mine has EARNED me this. You see the drip, the luxury cars, the clothes, the swag, that’s not what made me. That’s what’s on me, not what’s in me.â€
“I do this for God’s glory and to show you that you can do anything when you believe and know it’s possible for you too,†he continued.
Back in March, in a video posted to YouTube, Hughes interviewed “Freeway Ricky†Ross, a major player in the Los Angeles cocaine trade in the ’80s and ’90s who was eventually sentenced for his role leading a national drug trafficking empire. After teaching himself to read in prison and completing his sentence, Ross has restyled himself as a prison reform activist and entrepreneur.
“The thing about life is, life is like a boomerang,†Ross told Hughes in the interview. “Whatever you throw out, it comes back to you. So, you know if you running around, and you frontin’ and fakin’ it trying to make everyone think you up on it when you really ain’t, that’s what’s going to come back to you, fakin’ and shakin’.â€