Perfect husband turns out to be perfect con man
(WJBK) - Imagine you turn on your TV and see the person you love.
"I thought he was the perfect guy," Stephanie said. "We would have family parties all the time."
And the reporter, this reporter, is accusing the man of your dreams of being someone you don't even know.
Rob Wolchek: "You're a crook, a drunk, you've got a bunch of DUIs, you drive around without a license."
John Floyd: "Who's a crook?"
Wolchek: "You're a crook."
The crook is John Houston Floyd.
Floyd: "Who's a crook?"
Wolchek: "You're a crook. See that? That is a crook and that's you."
Floyd: "Yeah, that's you."
The wife is Stephanie Floyd.
"He has used me and humiliated me and my family and everybody else from the beginning," she said.
Stephanie was in court, watching as her husband was arraigned on his latest charges, false pretenses more than $20,000 as well as conspiracy, forgery and conducting a criminal enterprise, racketeering.
Now, one year after watching my Hall of Shame story on her husband, Stephanie is shattered yet relieved. Her long nightmare is over.
"I don't feel sorry for him one bit," she said.
The John Houston Floyd that Stephanie knew, was a successful contractor who swept her off her feet about five years ago. He owned several companies and provided Stephanie with a wonderful life, huge homes, vacations.
They married and had two children, John was a good stepdad to Stephanie's two other kids from a previous marriage.
John didn't talk about his work, he said that was his business. Her job was to raise the kids.
"I never really looked him up because I'm an honest, true person," she said. "I believe in trusting the people that I love and he took that love and he used me. He's destroyed everything."
My original story was about John Floyd slipped through the cracks. He'd been in federal prison for drug dealing and state prison for stealing close to $100,000 from a family in a bogus real estate deal. Yet somehow John Floyd tricked the state of Michigan into giving him a contractor's license - despite being a convicted felon.
He used that license to cheat people all over the state, taking down payments on driveway jobs and remodeling jobs and disappearing with tens of thousands of their dollars.
Floyd had a pile of drunk driving convictions and hadn't had a valid driver's license since 1999. Yet he was always driving expensive vehicles - which were registered to women. I'll introduce you to them, later.
After my story aired, it got a lot of attention. Soon, the cops and the courts put the pieces together and John Floyd was sent to prison for his past DUIs.
Stephanie Floyd didn't even know her husband was going to prison. She didn't know a lot of things about John.
Soon she found a stash of cell phones, papers with companies in her name, properties in her name and family's name, cars in her family's name.
She even found a life insurance policy taken out on her father with her dad's signature forged. The beneficiary? John Houston Floyd.
Stephanie called me.
"I am a victim just like everybody else," she said. "My children are victims. My family are victims."
And Stephanie also called the police.
Rochester Det. Jeff Firman says John Floyd looked into Floyd's past.
"Every aspect of his life, he was lying to whoever he had to, people he was close to," Firman said. "Doing anything that he could to get something from them. Usually that was money."
The detective was already looking into Floyd, the info Stephanie brought to him was the nail in the coffin. But Stephanie Floyd wasn't the only woman who contacted me.
Meet Jennifer and Valerie.
Wolchek: "You were just watching on TV and saw that I did a story on John Floyd and what did you think when you saw that?"
Jennifer: "I thought thank God finally. Finally somebody caught him and is speaking up."
Wolchek: "So this guy could just charm anybody?"
"Yeah. Anyone," Valerie said.
They say John Floyd had used them and their names and left them high and dry.
Wolchek: "He was going to fix up your house but you had to take out a car in your name and give it to him?"
"Yeah, and he'd make payments," said Valerie.
Wolchek: "Now why did he say he needed you to do that?"
"Because he couldn't get one in his name because of his credit," said Valerie.
Floyd had convinced Valerie he was a rich contractor just like he did Stephanie. She never doubted him.
"And then the next thing I know he crashed it, abandoned it and then he was trying to get me to say I did it," Valerie said.
Wolchek: "So you had a car repossessed because of him."
"Yeah."
Wolchek: "A car you never even drove."
"Yeah."
Wolchek: So he tricked you."
"Yeah. I ended up signing a lease for a brand new vehicle for him," she said.
Jennifer says she met John Floyd more than 10 years ago. He did some work around her house as a favor.
Then he wanted a favor in return - her signature on a lease for what was supposed to be a work truck. Instead, it was for a $49,000 Infiniti.
He didn't make the payments and she had no idea where he was until she got a call from Floyd six months into the lease.
"Here's your vehicle go get it," she said he told her. "And when I did it was a mess.
"Trashed. The inside of it was trashed."
She was sued by the leasing company and now owed $50,000 on a car she never even drove.
Which brings us back to court.
"You are being charged with a crime of conducting a criminal enterprise which is a felony and is punishable by 20 years in prison," the judge said.
The attorney general's office is charging Floyd with the same types of crimes they would a mobster or the leader of a gang. There are many victims, many crimes.
"We have about as strong a case as we can get." Firman said.
"There are damages to people throughout different counties - Washtenaw, Macomb, Wayne and Oakland. Just widespread deceiving of people," a prosecutor said.
"He has no heart. He just doesn't care," Valerie said.
But perhaps the saddest part of John Floyd's story is that it took a TV story to unmask a monster that had fooled the person who trusted him most - his own wife.
"He really conned me and nothing is more heartbreaking," Stephanie said. "Than to realize you were fooled by someone you really loved."
A not guilty plea was entered by Floyd, who said he can afford his own attorney. That was news to his wife who has been left homeless and penniless.