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August 14, 2025 • 48 mins

Libby’s husband wasn’t just hiding secrets; he was committing crimes in her name.  

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I remember this so clearly. I was in my powder
blue pajamas and I came out and I said something
to him, I go, what are you involved in? Are
you being investigated by the FBI? And he looked at
me so coldly, like he never knew me, and he said,

(00:24):
if I go down, I'm taking you with me.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm Andrea Gunning. And this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Recently, we got in touch with a group
called the White Collar Wives Project. It's a support group
for women who were blindsided by their husband's finance crimes.

(01:01):
Their mission is to help guide women through the fallout legally,
financially and emotionally. For members, it's a place where they
can feel supported and most importantly, believed, a place where
no one is asking the ever present question he didn't know.
That's Libby Henry. She was one of the first members

(01:22):
of the White Collar Wives and like all the women
in the group, she was in the dark about what
her husband was really doing at work.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I didn't say, oh, honey, dinner's writing. And by the way,
did you commit fraud?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Libby grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, or as the locals
call it, Lousvoe.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
It's almost like you've got something caught in your throat.
We automatically know if you're not from here. If you're
saying Louisville or Louisville.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, I'm not from there. So for this episode, I'm
going to be saying Louisville. Early on, Libby knew her
family was like others. Her mother didn't get along with
most people.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
She had an undiagnosed personality disorder. Today they call this
borderline personality disorder. That at the time I didn't know
what was wrong with her because there wasn't the Internet
and nobody was talking about mental health back then.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Because of her mom's mental illness, life at home was
an emotional roller coaster.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
As I entered the ninth grade, I was pretty much
trying to spend the night out all the time because
she had such a problem controlling her emotions. I just
tried to get away.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
She spent a lot of time at friends' houses, and
by the time she graduated high school, she had one
goal for her future. It was heartbreakingly simple.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
What I saw around meet my friend's houses. I wanted
for myself. I just wanted to have a normal home
because I didn't come from one. That was my big plan.
That was it.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
She started college at the University of Kentucky. It's in Lexington,
the horse racing capital of the world.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh gosh, Lexington, beautiful play surrounded by these beautiful horse farms,
rolling fields. When I got there, the first thing I
thought is that I had some freedom.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
It was the eighties. Libby was carefree. She joined a
sorority and quickly made friends.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
There were a lot of fraternity parties. They could have
all these cag parties. You would go from one house
to the next house. Lots of bands were always playing.
That was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Her junior year, she went to the first kickoff game
of the football season, and of course it was a
big party.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
My friend came up to me and said, do you
know Ted House.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Ted House was in one of her history classes, caught
her eye before, but they didn't really know each other.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
He was undeniably good looking, you know that, tall, dark,
and handsome. He was all those things. She goes, well,
he wants to go out with you, and I'm like,
oh wow, okay. So later that same night he approached
me and started talking to me, but he started talking
about the history syllabus, and I think he was nervous

(04:27):
because talking about the history syllabus was kind of boring.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Livy left the party underwhelmed.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
But two days later my friend called me and she said,
we need a double date. He really wants to go
out with you, and I'm like, okay, And we go
on a double date to this French restaurant and he
was an entirely different human being. He was charming and
funny and much more relaxed.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
It was like she was really seeing him for the
first time.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
I thought, Gosh, this guy's so fun. Wow, you know,
I like this guy. And two days after that he
asked me out again, and we just kept rolling and
kept going out, and it wasn't long before we were
an exclusive couple.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Lebby felt like herself around Ted. He was the first
guy to make her feel that way.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
I was really comfortable with who I was with Ted,
like I was always laughing. He liked that about me.
He liked the humor.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
But it quickly became clear that she and Ted came
from different backgrounds. To borrow a term from the horse world,
he had pedigree private boarding schools, country clubs and summer
trips abroad, but he wasn't pretentious about it.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Ted didn't seem to care that I didn't have any money.
That didn't seem to bother him.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
The difference in their upbringing meant nothing. They just wanted
to be together.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
The mundane things that you do by yourself that don't
see being very fun or of course very fun when
you are head over heels with someone, and we were.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Libby felt safe when she was with Ted. He had
that kind of confidence.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
He's kind of like that protector, and things were taken
care of. If I was having an issue, here was Ted.
He was taking care of everything. He was always that guy.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
After a few months of dating, Ted took Libby to
meet his parents. They were in town for a fundraiser.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
And I didn't really realize what I walked into. They
are a very politically connected family. The first time I
met them, they were having a fundraiser for the governor
of Indiana.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Ted didn't really prepare her for this scene, and to
be fair, he couldn't have.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
I'll walk in the foyer of this absolutely beautiful home,
and at first, you know, you're just so nervous because
I'm like, what do I have to offer in this conversation?
What can I contribute? That is very intimidating for someone
like me who came from the background that I came from.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Lebby tried to stay quiet, smile and hide the run
in her stockings, but above all, she wanted to make
a good first impression with Ted's parents.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, do you remember wondering if Ted's mother thought maybe
I'm really not good enough first?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Then?

Speaker 1 (07:31):
But I got through it and his parents were very
nice to me.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Ted's dad was a successful businessman and his mother was
a philanthropist, a patron of the arts type. The night
of the fundraiser, Libby was just herself. She made them laugh,
and it turned out that was enough for the House family.
Pretty Soon, Libby became a regular fixture at Ted's family events.

(07:58):
They made her feel welcome.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
They never seemed ostentatious to me. They weren't people that
bragged about money. They had money, but nobody was bragging
about it. They were very supportive, and they were interested
in me. Things just seemed so effortless with them.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Ted's family genuinely loved being around each other.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
So you can imagine when I'm with this family where
things are so easy, and there wasn't chaos. That's the word.
There was no chaos. I loved them, I truly did.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
As they got more serious, she and Ted opened up
about their flaws and tried to help each other grow.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
He was the kind of guy that would get really mad,
but then he would be like, okay, I popped off.
That was always his thing. But he does know that
about himself. And I wasn't the best either, because the
one thing that I did not come out of my
house with was coping skills. I came out of my
house like a piece of Swiss cheese. I had a

(09:03):
lot of holes.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Ted and Libby started talking about their future. They both
knew they wanted to have kids and stay close to family.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
It was within a year he asked me to marry him.
He was nervous, but it wasn't some big gesture.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
He proposed in her living room with the ring behind
his back. She remembers seeing his nerves. He was shaking.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
He's like, you know, I'm not really good at this,
but I want you to marry me. It was sweet
and I liked it.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Ted had the ring custom made and it came with
a special meaning.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
This woman named b Roth made all three of the
daughter in law's rings. My mother in law had a
sapphire and diamond emerald cut I had a sapphire and
diamond Marquis, but we all had the sapphire and diamond
to match our mother in law. I couldn't believe that

(10:12):
I was marrying someone like Ted, not because he came
from money, but because I thought his family was so
close and they seemed like a cohesive unit. It was
like that dream I told you when I was young,
I'm getting married and I'm going to have that family.
I remember thinking it's all happening for me.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Once they graduated college, Liby and Ted had a big
church wedding. They both took jobs working for the State
of Indiana, just over the border from Lexington.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
I worked for the Department of Insurance. He was in
land and acquisition, so he would go and talk to
people and they loved him. Ted could talk to anybody.
I mean he could charm anybody, and they loved him.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Ted was passionate about real estate, so he found them
the perfect home. Even though they both worked. Ted's family
money helped them close on that first house.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
I knew he had a trust fund, because that's how
we bought our first house with his trust fund. Are
we trying to make our house a home? His mother
would always come over bringing gourmet goodies.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
That year, Libby got a special gift from her mother
in law, something to symbolize their bond.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Tut's mother had a circle pennant made for each daughter
in law with little pearls around it, and she said,
this is a symbol of our circle, our family, and
that you're in the circle.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Within the first year of their marriage, Libby found out
she was pregnant with the baby girl. For a moment,
everything felt perfect.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
About six months, I go to the doctor and there's
no heartbeat.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
The baby had died. At six months. Ted and his
family surrounded Libby, helping her through the grief. The doctors
recommended she wait to get pregnant again, but she didn't.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
I that's that baby in May, and I was pregnant
again in July, and then I had a healthy baby girl.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
At that point, it was a new beginning and they
wanted a change of scenery to match. They started talking
about returning to Louisville, Libby's hometown.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
And then Ted comes home and says, I've got big news,
and I'm like, what kind of big news? And he said, well,
I've got an offer to go into the mortgage business
in Louisville. So when he said we're moving, I was like, yay,
you know, going home.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
With their new baby. They packed up and started over.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
And we both got full time jobs. At that point.
I worked for wait for it, a paging company, and
pagers were the things that was big technology back then,
and he obviously was in the mortgage industry. He started
working for a friend and he was alone originator.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
The job came naturally to him. Before long, he started
his own company, brokering mortgages.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
He liked it so much he started his own business.
They seemed to do so well. He had a lot
of employees that started working for him, a lot of
them he knew. There were people that we knew, and
it just seemed like this was just the absolute best job.
He's got friends that work for him.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
The first few years in Louisville were like a dream.
Libby had the normal family she'd always wanted. The only
thing that wasn't going perfectly was Libby's health. When her
daughter was a toddler, Libby began having intense back pain.
She needed spinal surgery, but the pain persisted, so she
and Ted sat down and decided that Libby should quit

(14:17):
her job, at least for the time being.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Ted said, you know, I'm making enough money, you don't
need to go back to work. So I didn't. I
would stay home for the next ten years. And that
was a critical mistake for me.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Ted's new mortgage business in Louisville was doing well enough
for Libby to quit her job. That way she could
focus on her health and their daughter.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
I did everything that stay at home moms do. You know, kids, playdates,
everything they had to do with my daughter. You know,
I was planning.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
It was Libby's job to handle their daughter's schedule, and
Ted's job was to handle the finances, which he'd already
been doing anyway.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
And I mean, I'm dyslexic. It affects my numbers. And
Ted was like a human calculator.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
They'd been in Louisville a few years when.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Ted came home and said that he had looked at
this house in a neighborhood called Bridge Point, which was
a very nice neighborhood, and that was a big leak
as far as cost and the homes.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
He wanted an upgrade, something to reflect his success. Libby
started drawing up renovation plans and interior designs.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
I walked in and I redid the whole thing, the yard,
you name it. I did it. Everything that I conjured
up in my head I was able to execute.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
When it was done, the house was perfect. It was
going to be the forever home.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Life seemed to be getting better and better and better.
I never thought that money was an issue in my
life at all.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
But Ted still wasn't satisfied. He wanted to become a
Kentucky real estate tycoon, so he found new business partners
to start another venture, flipping houses.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Flipping homes in depressed parts of Louisville wasn't unusual back then,
because the timeframe of this is two thousand, two thousand
and one, two thousand and two, before the housing bubble burst.
I mean, I knew so many people flipping houses.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
One of Ted's new business partners was a real estate
consultant named Khalid.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Khalid was a guy who grew up in a depressed
part of Louisville, and Khalid had done well for himself
business wise, so they went into business together flipping homes
Khalid was from that area, and I think he knew
a lot of people in that area, which made him

(17:23):
a nice liaison.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Ted and Khaled's business proved more successful than either of
them imagined. The money was rolling in, and Ted really
treated the family.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
We were able to do all of these things. For example,
we were in Costa Rica. We were able to take
our daughter to Bahamas, which was incredible. We were at
Martha's vineyard. We were doing all these things that I
could have never done. Now he's used to think this
is great, you know, what a charmed life. I really

(17:55):
truly was grateful for everything. And then things started to change.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Because Ted's attitude started to change. He had always been
quick to anger, but as Libby shared, he was quick
to calm down. This time it was different.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Like he would come home increasingly irritable, but I couldn't
understand why it was ongoing. And I would ask him
and he's like, oh, it's work, stress, it's work stress.
Then he started waking up in the middle of the
night like he was in a panic. But it was
every night like clockwork, and I never can understand it.
I'm like, what in the world, why do you wake

(18:36):
up like this? Oh, I've just got a lot on
my mind. I just thought, okay, well, there's stress.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
She knew his job could be intense. He was always
managing multiple sales and home renovations, each had their own
deadlines and expenses. But as the year went on, Ted's
stress only mounted.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
But I kept asking and he kept getting a little
bit short with me, and I was thought, gosh, what
is the problem.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Ted never shared details about his business with Libby. He
kept it all inside, except for this. One day in
two thousand and two. She walked into their bathroom to
find Ted leaning over the sink and.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
I thought he was sick. And I said what's wrong?
And his reaction was so unusual. He actually did have
tears in his eyes and he said, it's that f
N Khalid, And I said, what are we talking about?
What's wrong with Khalid?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Libby had met Khalid once or twice. He had always
been polite to her.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
He's so angry, and he's saying, you know this, f
and Khalid he screwed me over, He's gonna screw me.
He just kept saying that over and our again. I go,
I don't know what we're talking about. What are we
talking about? And why are you angry with Khalid? And
he said he's gonna screw me and he may kill you.

(20:10):
He may kill our daughter. What those aren't words you
expect to hear from your husband about a business associate. Ever,
I was paralyzed for a second. I felt my chest
tighten up because I thought, what do you mean kill?

(20:32):
He's like, well, there's a business deal that's gone bad,
and I don't know what that mf or will do.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Libby wanted to go to the police, but when she
said that, Ted quickly backtracked. He shook it off and
told Libby to forget he ever said anything. But that
wasn't going to happen. Her mind was racing. Was Khalid
really threatening her and her daughter? Why would Ted say
that to her? She got in the car and left
the house.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
I start crying all that stress. I just start crying
because I could not make sense of it.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
But when Libby returned home to ask more questions, Ted
was gone.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
So I waited and waited and didn't come back. Well,
I gathered myself together and I thought, I'm going to
call his dad. I'm going to cause parents, and I
can still remember his mother saying they were outside by
the pool, and they absorbed all that information, but it
wasn't like they were panicked like I was.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
A little while later, Ted's mom called back. Apparently they'd
talked to Ted and he'd given them the full story.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
And they said, Teddy got a little spooped, and I
thought a little spooped. You know, I didn't feel satisfied
with that answer. She said, well, Ted's realized that Khalid
might not be the most savory person. He's a little
bit unsavory, and he's not going to consort with him anymore,
do business with him. And I said, well, he said

(22:09):
kill she goes he's just overreacted. I said, this seems
a lot more serious than that, and she said, Libby,
it's okay. He's not going to do business with him anymore.
His dad's talked to him. And you know what, I
believed that because his dad was telling me this businessman, stockbroker,

(22:35):
graduate school educated man, highly respected, no nonsense man. If
they thought that that was true, they just reassured me.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
They also advised Libby not to go around telling anyone
about that conversation with Ted. She trusted his parents, but
she was still unsettled.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
So that was not even a ragged flag. It was
a red flare.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
When Ted finally came home, he didn't want to talk
about it. He wouldn't talk about it. The house was
filled with tension.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
And during that time things really started to go sideways.
Ted's moods were so awful.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Every day Ted was on edge. The days turned into weeks.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
So not only is he waking up at three o'clock
in the morning, but I'm also waking up to the
glow of the laptop. It's like he slept with that
computer all the time.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
One night, Libby was home alone watching TV and she
saw something that would change her life.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
I don't know if it was date lone. I don't
know if it was sixty minutes, but it was a
woman on TV and her husband died and she didn't
know anything about her finances, nothing, and apparently she owed
thousands of dollars to the IRASID. Of course she's on
the hook because she signed those tax returns and she

(24:16):
lost everything. And I was like, she is me, that
is me.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Since the beginning of their marriage, Ted had paid all
their bills, paid off the credit cards, and managed their savings.
When it came to their personal finances. She only knew
what Ted told her, and as for his businesses, she
was completely in the dark.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
So I went to him and I'm like, I want
to fold her. And I wanted a fold her that
showed me what happens if anything happened to him. I
didn't know what would happen with the company, would his
business partner buy me out? I mean, these were maybe
even silly questions. I just didn't know anything. So when
I started asking, he started pushing back, and I remember thinking,

(25:10):
you know, that's not normal. Why is he defensive?

Speaker 2 (25:18):
The more Ted pushed back, the more insistent Liddy became.
She needed to know everything. She wanted hard copies.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
I mean, every time I asked, got madder and matter
and matter and matter, to the point we were having
really big fights, but I'm still asking about that Faulder.
Our arguments kept escalating because I thought, well, does he
think I'm not smart enough to understand? Does he think
he just needs to be controlling and he's the one

(25:48):
that needs to be able to do at all. Never
would I have thought he was involved anything that was
an a fairies never didn't even occur to me.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Libby never got that folder of financial documents because A
few weeks later, Ted sat her down and in a
calm voice, he told her the truth, or at least
a sliver of it.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Three days before Christmas, he tells me, we're bankrupt. We
need to file bankruptcy. And I don't just mean any bankruptcy,
I mean Chapter seven complete liquidation, bankrupt.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Libby had spent a year begging Ted for financial transparency.
The entire time, he never made any indication that they
were in debt. Now, out of the blue, he told
her they were bankrupt. It didn't add up.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
I thought that can't be right. I mean, it just
can't be right, because you have this company, You've purchased
this beautiful home, We've lived this life. How would we
be bankrupt. I couldn't make sense of it, and I
didn't even get a good answer.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
When Ted tried to explain how it happened, it was
just word salad about business deals gone bad. She needed space.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
I thought something's really wrong. We really should be separated.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
She told him to move out, and he did. Before
he left, he set up a meeting with a bankruptcy attorney.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
And I'm listening, but I'm still like in shock because
I couldn't make sense of it. I'm like, well, how
are we bankrupt? Like, why are we bankrupt? Where is
the money?

Speaker 2 (27:35):
He told Libby this meeting would give her answers, but
it didn't. The next day he came to her with
a new plan.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
He comes back and says, I think we could have
just you file bankruptcy and not me. The house was
solely in my name. I had no idea why he
wanted to do that. I just knew that. I was like,
you need to leave because I thought he wants to
saddle me with all of that. And he comes out

(28:06):
of that unscathed. It was enough for me to be like,
I'm done.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
She couldn't stay in the marriage. She wanted a divorce.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
And it was like a race down to our attorneys.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
They had both arrived at their separate attorney's offices at
the same time.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
I was at my attorneys, he was at his attorneys. Well.
He wanted to make sure that he was the petitioner.
That was so important. Attack he needed to feel like
he's the one that was divorcing me.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
They started the process, but before any papers were signed,
Ted tried to take back control.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
So as we're moving along in this divorce. I came
home and he's standing in our kitchen saying, I've called
the divorce off. That's exactly how he said it. I've
called the divorce off. I'm like, okay, have you You've
called it off? And he said, and I've written this
letter and I want you to read it. And the

(29:14):
letter stated all the things that he had done to
me that were very unkind admitting everything. And then he says,
I know you don't know anything about my business practices,
but that will change, Like I'm going to let you
in now on everything. But I still wasn't swayed by it,
because I thought, well, why was he resistant in the

(29:36):
first place.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
The letter didn't change her mind. One line stood out,
though I know you don't know anything about my business practices,
but that will change. It sounded like he was finally
giving her what she wanted, transparency. The only problem he
failed to mention the moment most important detail in.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
That letter I should point out he never says, by
the way, I've been committing mortgage fraud in your life's
about to implode.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
A few weeks after Libby and Ted began their divorce,
Ted wanted to repair the relationship He wrote her a
letter apologizing, promising to come clean about their finances, but
Libby didn't trust it. She had a hunt that Ted
was still hiding something, so she decided to turn to
the Louisville rumor mill. Libby knew her town well. If

(30:52):
Ted was up to something, someone had to know.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
I would find out by a friends has There was
an attorney. He said that Ted was being investigated by
the FBI. I was like what.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Ted was being investigated for? A complex mortgage fraud scheme
built on forged documents and phony buyers. Ted Khalid and
his coworkers were all in on it.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
They found these straw buyers to buy these homes in
a dilapidated area of Louisville.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
On paper, those buyers looked great. They had jobs, income,
and enough credit to qualify, but none of it was real.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
They made up their employment so they didn't make the
money that they said they did, so that would induce
a lender to give them a loan when they shouldn't
have had it in the first place.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
But in the moment, Libby didn't know any of these details.
All she knew was that they were bankrupt and that
her husband was being in investigated by the FBI. So
the next time Ted came over to the house, Libby
met him in the driveway to demand answers.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
And I remember this so clearly. I was in my
powder blue pajamas and I came out and I said,
what are you involved in? He knew at that point
that I'm aware that something's wrong. And I said, are
you being investigated by the FBI? And he looked at

(32:31):
me so coldly, like he never knew me, and he said,
if I go down, I'm taking you with me. I
go You owe me more of an explanation, And he said, verbatim,
I don't owe you anything, bitch. That's what he said
to me. I don't owe you anything, bitch.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
The man she'd fallen in love with a decade ago
was gone. Ted wasn't trying to protect her anymore. He
was trying to pull her down right alongside him. But
she wasn't about to let that happen. She made an
appointment to speak with the authorities herself. A few days later,
Libby found herself walking into a federal building, her heart pounding.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
And this is surreal to me. I mean, what minute,
I'm married a stay at home mom and the next minute,
I need to go and speak with the FBI. And
so I get there and there were three agents and
they're talking to me, asking me, you know, general questions.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Libby sat there trying to recall every conversation, every detail,
every red flag she ignored about her husband. She wanted
to help their case and show them she was innocent.
The agents left the room, Libby waited and waited.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
He comes back in and he said, the only thing
you're guilty of is trusting your husband. That's all you're
guilty of.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
While the FBI built their case, Libby still had to
manage the divorce and bankruptcy filings. They short sold the
house and nearly everything they owned.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
I think my first real taste of what I would
have to endare it was going to the grocery store
thinking that I had money, and I shopped you for
an hour, went to buy the groceries and there was
no money, you know, no funds, and they had to
pull my cart aside. And that's embarrassing. And I could

(34:45):
feel the sweat beating up and that was my first indication.
I was like, this is bad. There's no money.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
In a matter of weeks, she went from never having
to think about money, to not having enough for groceries
to make matters worse, Ted became erratic. He knew the
FEDS were closing in on him.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Ted got really, really unruly. He would show up at
my house, hide behind a tree. It'd be like late
at night, and I would sit on the back of
my steps and he would come and yell at me.
He would say the oddest things to me. He would
say things like, I will never be found guilty. I

(35:29):
will be found innocent in a court of lot. And
he named himself Teflne Ted because the charges don't stick.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
But Ted's nickname didn't hold up. He was indicted and
the charges were serious mortgage fraud, bang fraud, wire fraud,
totaling millions of dollars. Ted was one of four men
named in the indictment, along with Khalid and two other
men lived had never heard of. They'd been inflating the

(36:02):
value of homes, flipping them to each other at ballooned prices,
and pocketing the difference.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
The scheme worked for a while, but then they started
to defall on these loans, and you know, someone's left
holding the bag.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
The house of cards collapsed and Libby was the one
left trying to make sense of the wreckage After the indictment,
It was another four years of hearings and negotiations before
Ted was sentenced to prison. Libby tried her best to
co parent with him during this tense waiting period. He

(36:39):
was ordered to pay one hundred and forty nine dollars
a month in child support, practically nothing. As part of
the divorce agreement, Libby and her daughter could stay in
a condo owned by Ted's parents, but only for two years.
After that she would be on her own.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
That's not a long time. When you don't have a job,
you don't know if you have to go back to school,
that goes by very quickly. My daughter was ten years old,
and that scared me a great deal. And what scared
me more is Ted defaulted on every single thing, so
I had to go to court.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Ted left behind a trail of defaulted debt, some of
it in Libby's name through forged signatures, and I.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Knew whose signature it was. It was my husband's. I
recognized his paintwriting.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
She tried to call the debt collectors, but as soon
as she said Ted was her ex husband, they're tone shifted.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
If you say it's somebody you don't know, then their alarm.
You say it's your husband. Uh, like we're one person.
It really was like I saw my identity over at
the altar.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Her credit was wrecked and her sense of safety was gone.
After those two years were up, she had to find
a new home. With nowhere to go, she and her
daughter moved into a Rundown apartment.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Pretty dilapidated place, roaches awful, but I needed a place
to live.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Because of her bankruptcy filing, she couldn't even get the
lights turned on in her name.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
They wouldn't even let me get electric in money without
a co center. And I'm like, well, am I just
going to freeze to death.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
One of the last times she saw Ted, she asked
him why he did.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
It it is answer was because I can't That's what
he said to me after all those years. And I said,
you bankrupted me. His answer was I bankrupted myself. It's
almost like he didn't care how that affected me.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
One day, when Libby was at a particularly low point,
she decided to reach out to Ted's mother.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
I asked his mom, I begged, and I said, we
need money. I said, do you realize that Ted only
Patty's one hundred and forty nine dollars a month, and
her exact words were, that's what the courts say.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
This woman had welcomed her into their family and even
given her that circle necklace to represent their bond. But
Ted's parents wouldn't give her a cent, not even for
their granddaughter's education.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
And I couldn't believe it because I adored them. I mean,
they had so much. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't
be generous. They never gave me a dollar more.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
It was heartbreaking because she respected them and she thought
she was in their circle, but when she was drowning,
they looked the other way. In the end, their loyalty
was never to her, it was to Ted.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
I felt like his parents thought I'd betrayed him by
not standing by my man. In quotes, if you will
it is, that's sort of I think they wanted me
to do. But their son betrayed me.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Finally, Ted pled guilty. There was no trial, no courtroom showdown,
no witness stand where Libby could testify to what she'd lost.
In a way, Libby wanted to hear it all out
in the open.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
If there's a trial you get to watch and you
can see what happened to your life. I wanted to
know what really happened.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
He was sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison and
ordered to pay three million dollars in restitution. After the sentencing,
Libby decided to go look for answers on her own.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
I decided I wanted to do an archaeological dig on myself.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
She called up an acquaintance who worked in the mortgage business.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
And I asked her, do you know what happened? Because
I thought she did, And she said, you know, Libby,
let me tell you something. You need to get on
online deed records. She goes, you might find yourself there.
I go, what do you mean, I've never been on
that ever. She said, just take my advice and go look.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
So Lebby did and what she found made her stomach turn.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Well, I go look at those deeds and there my
name was. They had forged my name in that freud schime.
When I found that out, I sent a text message
to my ex husband that I knew what he had
done to me. You used me in your floud ski.
I mean, what happens if the FBI would have thought
that I really was a part of that, and I

(41:33):
was sitting in prison. He put my freedom in jeopardy
and I never spoke a war to him again.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Libby took the forged documents to the police station to
try and press charges.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
This detective called me and goes, you know, I was
interested in your case. Here's the thing. Your husband's already
gone to prison. This case has been a unicated, so
there's nothing that we can do for you. And I thought,
why not? How come I can't do something for me?
I mean, it looks like I help facilitate that fraud.

(42:13):
But he said there was nothing that could be done.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
If she couldn't get justice, she at least wanted to
set the record straight.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
I said, well, I want my name off those dats.
I didn't care if they sat there for ten years.
I did not want for generations it to look like
I committed that fraud.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
After eight years of back and forth, she got the
documents amended.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
It finally says on online deed records, my name was
obtained forged ex husband or others. It officially says that
now there's proof, and now I can set that rumor straight.
But words rumors really truly can harm you forever.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Even after she got the records fixed, she still hears
whispers rumors about her being in on it.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
And people love it when people that they see as
being affluent, living the life, belonging to country clubs fall
I didn't grow up with all that. I appreciated it,
but a lot of people just assume, Oh, they deserve it,
they need I didn't know. I was financially illiterate, and

(43:28):
that I tell people, do not be that. If your
significant other is push them back, that's a red flag.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
It's a lesson. She learned the hardest way possible, but
unlike the bankruptcy and the deeds, some consequences could never
be expunged.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
It affected my relationship with my daughter. A young girl
had this beautiful life and all of a sudden, it's
food stamps. People at school aren't being nice to her
because her dad's in prison. She was so upset in
here her father's going to prison. She just wanted to

(44:12):
see him, and he got mad at her and sent
her an email from prison saying, don't be like your mother.
You won't do well in life from prison, and I thought, Wow,
what a statement to make. You're in a federal prison.
Telling you know, your daughter not to be like her mother.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Ted was released from prison in twenty ten. He never
reached out to Libby.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
And then he got to transition right back into another
home and a condo that his parents owned. Was never
like that for me. I applied for affordable housing twice,
never could get it.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
It's hard for Libby to stomach watching Ted end up
with a soft landing. She's had to fight tooth and
nail to reach build her life and regain financial stability.
Plus there's still big unanswered questions. Did Khalid really threaten
to kill her? What was really going on there to.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
This day, I don't really know if that's true or not.
Maybe a fear tached I don't know. I don't know
if Ted was lying to me. Only Ted would know that.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
She's had to come to terms with being in the
dark and not knowing everything about the crimes that destroyed
her life.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
I have to just live with never knowing, because maybe
somebody will come out of the woodwork to talk to
me and tell me they haven't yet. But you never know,
You never know what could happen. You're supposed to forgive
people for yourself. I have a really hard time with that,

(46:01):
but I don't want to be bitter because that just
eats you at.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
We end every episode with the same question, why did
you want to tell your story?

Speaker 1 (46:14):
I always warn that I didn't get the life that
I set out to have because I grew up with
such dysfunction. My dream was to be married to someone
who loved me. I know, it's silly with that house
and white picket fence and a nice family because I
didn't have it. In the end, it's also a cautionary tale.

(46:38):
There's a lot in there that I would never do again.
I had a bake of kille and he put many
in it, and I was okay with that. He paid
all the credit cards, he did all of it, and
I was clueless. You know, don't do that. Don't let
that happen to you. Some small things that I could
have done could have changed the course of my life.

(47:01):
And I mean literally, here I am today and while
life imploded, and I'm like, why did that happen? Maybe
to help other people, Maybe that's just as simple as that.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Next week on Betrayal Weekly, She's doing so many lives,
broken so many hearts.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
It's just left me wondering, did she.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Ever have any love for any of us. If you
would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or
want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us at
betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal pod at gmail

(47:51):
dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way to
show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts,
and don't forget to rate and Betrayal. Five star reviews
go a long way. A big thank you to all
of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts,
a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

(48:12):
The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason,
hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced
by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers
are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is
Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and mixing by

(48:33):
Matt Delvecchio, additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme
composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music
and for more podcasts from iHeart, Visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from.
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Host

Andrea Gunning

Andrea Gunning

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