CHECKERS NOT CHESS
Johnson scoured through social media and appeared on television, but she never managed to track down Wedgeworth after he vanished from her life.
Wedgeworth had been jailed in DeKalb County, Georgia, for similar instances of fraud. In June 2014, three years before he met Johnson, Wedgeworth pleaded guilty to forgery in the first and third degree, identity fraud and driving with a suspended license.
Embarrassed, Johnson blamed herself.
Her bank prevented the fraudulent payments from processing, but she never got back the $3,000 she spent on watches. The cost of the watches set Johnson behind on paying her bills and pushed back her business plans by months.
Once she realized she had been scammed, Tekesia stopped focusing so much on her business. She spent her life in revenge doing interviews and podcasts to expose Brian.
She shared her story with her then 25-year-old daughter, Tiffany Maximin, as a cautionary tale. Johnson did what she could to warn others. She appeared on local TV news and shared her story across her social media; she knew just how easy it was to lose big. Yet despite her best efforts, other victims followed.
Then she died.
Johnson died one month before Wedgeworth was charged, but her story is almost certain to play a role in determining the outcome of the federal case in Tallahassee.
CHESS NOT CHECKERS
Ladies, DO NOT EVER waste your precious energy, your life force on revenge. One thing my brother who passed last year told me was that, I had a BAD HABIT of only being proactive AFTER the fact, instead of playing CHESS NOT CHECKERS from day one.
Investigate men on the offense. Run a background check. Don’t wait till later when he’s acting suspect or you realize he’s gotten over on you to start playing defense. Women’s bodies just weren’t created for all of that anxiety.
A man is not the prize. Don’t just go along with everything he says, too afraid to rock the boat, hoping he’s real. Men can be gold diggers too.But no one talks about that. And the women they gold dig from are the women who refuse to honor their feminine value by EXPECTING a man to PROVIDE.
Providers don’t ask women for money or gifts. Hustlers do. It’s hard to scam a feminine woman out of money, because she knows what a real man is.
Brian’s LIFE
Prosecutors said his ex-wife lives in Tallahassee, but Wedgeworth has no home of his own. “When he is not in prison, the defendant typically lives with the women he victimizes,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Keen wrote to the judge. The judge agreed with prosecutors that Wedgeworth was so dishonest he couldn’t be trusted to remain free between his arrest and trial.
Johnson and the women represented in Wedgeworth’s indictment – most were not identified by name, and a few identified only by initials – say the Alabama-born romance scammer made them believe he was a single surgeon looking to settle down.
Romance scams typically take place over online dating platforms and involve one party feigning romantic interest to earn another’s trust and access their finances. They have grown more common and costly. The FBI reported monetary losses in romance scams amounted to more than $1 billion last year.
This reporting is based on a five-month investigation of Wedgeworth and the case against him, including a review of records in his federal court case and more than 400 pages of police reports and court documents from states outside Florida where he has been accused – and in some cases convicted – of similar conduct.
It is also based on interviews with Wedgeworth’s sister, Juanicca Wedgeworth, and Johnson’s oldest daughter, Tiffany Maximin, as well as excerpts from Johnson’s social media posts and podcast interviews. Johnson died one month before Wedgeworth’s indictment, but she spoke in 2017 to a Jacksonville television news station about her encounter with Wedgeworth.
Wedgeworth has earned the moniker the “Casanova Scammer” over accusations that he made a career of targeting women in search of romance. The indictment said he impersonated a wealthy doctor and surgeon. He has pleaded guilty to similar charges before, including to dozens of counts of fraud and forgery in Georgia and Alabama. When he was arrested in Tennessee last year, he was also wanted by law enforcement in Ohio and Alabama, court records showed.
Wedgeworth declined through his lawyer, Joseph DeBelder, to discuss the case against him. “Wedgeworth will not be speaking to any media under the advice of his counsel,” said DeBelder, Wedgeworth’s public defender.
Outside the federal case, at least seven women in five counties primarily across the Southeast have filed police reports against Wedgeworth for fraud. Online forums have sprung up to connect his possible victims. And, like Johnson, some have devoted hours to launching amateur investigations into his whereabouts before he was arrested in Tennessee.
