Financial regulators have frozen the assets of two foreign currency exchange investment firms as part of a fraud investigation.

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission said it froze the assets of M25 Investments Inc. and M37 Investments LLC and has also frozen the assets of Scott P. Kear and Jeffrey L. Lyon of Waxahachie.

The suit filed in Dallas federal court also targets David G. Seaman of Arlington.

The suit alleges the defendants ran an $8 million scheme offering high returns to 224 customers – many of them elderly – out of offices in Texas, West Virginia and Mississippi. The defendants failed to disclose to investors that much of the money would not be used for foreign currency exchange investments, nor did they tell customers they could not pay promised annual returns of as much as 24 percent.

Initial attempts to contact the companies and individuals were not successful.

By ERIC TORBENSON

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices fell by the smallest percentage in almost two years in the latest housing market snapshot.

D-FW prices were down only 1.6 percent in July from a year earlier in the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller home price index.

 And local home prices were up from June to July, the fifth consecutive month of increases. The July figure is also the highest point in the home price index since last September.

The small annual decline in North Texas home prices is a big improvement from earlier in the year, when the Case-Shiller index showed that prices were falling by more than 5 percent from 2008.

The just-released data is more proof that home price declines bottomed in North Texas in early 2009.

“The rate of annual decline in home price values continues to decelerate, and we now seem to be witnessing some sustained monthly increases across many markets,” Standard & Poor’s David Blitzer said Tuesday in the report. “These figures continue to support an indication of stabilization in national real estate values.”

Analysts are keeping an eye on how the housing market reacts later this year when a popular federal home buying tax credit expires.

Nationwide home prices in July were still 13.3 percent below where they were a year earlier. But the index has been higher for three consecutive months, a strong indication that home prices have bottomed out.

U.S. home prices are still almost 30 percent below their peak in mid-2006.

In the D-FW area, July home prices were about 4 percent less than they were at the top of the market here in June 2007.

The Case-Shiller numbers add to growing evidence that the worst of the North Texas home price shakeout is over.

So far in 2009, the median home sales prices have dropped only about 2 percent in the residential sales industry’s Multiple Listing Service.

And the Case-Shiller decline estimate is even less.

“That’s really saying prices are flat,” said David Brown, who heads housing analyst Metrostudy Inc.’s Dallas office. “That’s a very small number.”

Some areas of the country are still seeing big home price reductions.

In Las Vegas, prices were down 31.4 percent in July from a year earlier, according to Case-Shiller. Values dropped by 28 percent in Phoenix and 24.6 percent in Detroit.

Case-Shiller tracks the prices of typical single-family homes in each metropolitan area. The index does not include condominiums and townhouses. It only covers pre-owned properties – no new construction.

Texas Instruments Inc. said Tuesday that it is finally ready to start making computer chips at a plant it completed in Richardson in 2006.

The company said it has begun hiring the first 250 workers for the plant, which it says will eventually employ as many as 1,000.

The building has been sitting empty.

Now, with the discounted purchase of $172.5 million in manufacturing equipment from a company in bankruptcy, TI is ready to get to work.

“The time is right for this investment,” Rich Templeton, chairman, president and chief executive, said in a prepared statement.

“Customer demand for analog chips is growing, and there’s tremendous desire to save energy and protect the environment. The chips produced here will help our customers make thousands of electronic products that are more energy-efficient. It is significant that these devices will be made here, in North Texas, in one of the industry’s most environmentally responsible fabs [fabricating plants].”

Richardson Mayor Gary Slagel, whose résumé includes 17 years at TI, said in an interview that regular communication with the company had made him confident TI wouldn’t abandon the facility.

And even while the facility sat dormant, it generated roughly $4.1 million in property taxes for the city, Slagel said.

TI said the plant would produce 300-millimeter silicon wafers from which chips are cut, much bigger than the commonly used 200-millimeter wafers.

Being able to get more chips out of each wafer reduces costs and increases production volume.

The analog chips built at the Richardson factory will be used in wireless smart phones, computers, industrial telecommunications equipment and other applications.

The first chips are expected to start shipping by the end of 2010, and the plant will eventually produce more than $1 billion worth of chips every year.

TI also emphasized the larger economic impact.

“These are high-quality, well-paying engineering, manufacturing and administrative jobs for our North Texas region,” Templeton said. “The infrastructure that a facility like this requires will create other indirect jobs with suppliers and support services.”

The original deal to build the plant also included $300 million for the University of Texas at Dallas to bolster its engineering efforts. That funding was supplied by the Texas Enterprise Fund, the UT System, UT Dallas itself, other state funds and private donors.

Slagel said the new facility – which TI says is the first chip plant to go into production in the U.S. since 1996 – should be around for years.

“Those fabs are very, very expensive,” he said. “It will have a long life.”