- I take you to be my wife
from this time forward,
to share all there is to come,
to help and to encourage
in all circumstances
in our life together.
[suspenseful piano music]
- Welcome, Libby,
into our family.
We wish you happiness, love,
and a wonderful, happy life.
- I thought
this is a dream come true.
- Not only do I love Libby
very, very much,
but she's my best friend.
- I would have never thought
that Ted was capable
of committing such acts.
[tense musical crescendo]
And that was a colossal mistake
on my part.
♪ ♪
- It was terrible.
- How do you think
you're not going to get caught?
- You wonder,
is he really a sociopath?
[tense music]
It was dire,
and I felt awful for her.
- Ted told me, "That guy might
k*ll you and our daughter."
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[tense somber music]
- I'm Andrea Gunning,
and this is "Betrayal,"
a show about the people
we trust the most
and the deceptions
that change everything.
Meet Libby Henry.
She married into
a rich and powerful family.
Her husband was handsome,
personable, and successful.
Libby was devoted to him,
but she says he was
only devoted to himself.
- I always thought
Ted would protect me
and that he would never allow
something bad to happen to me.
But he did.
I thought
we were partners for life.
I never dreamed that
he would turn on me like that.
It was as if I was the enemy.
[somber music]
[trumpet plays fanfare]
[upbeat rustic music]
♪ ♪
- I grew up in Louisville,
Kentucky.
♪ ♪
My dad sold insurance
and my mother was a homemaker.
♪ ♪
Unfortunately, my mother
suffered from mental illness.
[somber music]
- They believe she had
borderline
personality disorder,
which made Libby's childhood
really hard.
♪ ♪
- My mother, she would pretend
to k*ll herself.
And then by dinner,
she's fine.
- I never saw her mom soft
or warm towards Libby.
- I could feel that.
I was always trying
to get out of the house
and going to neighbors' homes.
- To add stress to the family,
they didn't have much money.
- My family life was
so chaotic,
I wanted to create
a normal one.
[soft upbeat music]
- I met Libby
in the first grade.
She was very outgoing,
very sociable.
She just had
that bubbly personality.
People wanted
to be friends with Libby.
- Libby's an attractive girl,
but she never thought of
herself as being attractive.
Kind of like
the ugly duckling.
She had really thick glasses
and a froggy voice.
And then in high school,
she just really blossomed
to be the prettiest.
♪ ♪
- I went to the University
of Kentucky in Lexington,
and I studied history.
But I never thought, oh,
I'm going to have a career.
I just wanted to get married
and have a normal family
because I knew mine was
not normal.
That was my goal.
- I first met Libby
her sophomore year.
We always had fun
and we ended up
getting an apartment together.
She's very pretty,
so she was never lacking
for dates or a boyfriend.
♪ ♪
- In August 1991,
I went to the Big Blue Bash,
which is a big party
to kick off football season.
And one of my girlfriends
told me about a guy
that she knew was in one
of my history classes.
His name was Ted House.
And she said "He'd really like
to go out with you."
I knew who he was
because he was very tall,
like 6'4" tall,
so, you know, stood out.
A very good-looking guy.
Really cute smile, dimple,
blue eyes.
Kind of a Ken doll.
That's what I thought of him.
[energetic rock music]
And later that night,
we were at a bar,
and Ted was there.
He approached me
and he started talking
about the history syllabus.
♪ ♪
So it didn't impress me
at first.
I was kind of bored.
And then Ted called me
on the phone a few days later
and asked me to go out.
♪ ♪
He took me
to a French restaurant.
When he was there, he wasn't
that dull guy anymore.
I mean,
he had all this personality
and was very charming and I was
like, OK, now I like this guy.
[peaceful music]
- After their first date,
I come out and she's, like,
peeking through the blinds,
watching him
walk down the walk.
And I was like,
what are you doing?
She's like, oh!
You know?
And really embarrassed
and flustered
that I'd caught her,
like, watching him.
But she had been super excited
about the date
and really liked him.
- Ted was in my fraternity.
Sharp, smart guy,
very confident.
- Ted came from
a well-to-do family in Indiana.
He had gone
to private schools,
drove nice cars,
had nice clothes,
was used to nicer things
in life.
- Ted came from a very
politically connected family.
♪ ♪
- The first time
I met Ted's parents,
we were at a party
for the governor of Indiana.
And that was so intimidating,
because I didn't come
from a family like that.
- They didn't
let their backgrounds
get in the way
of their relationship.
♪ ♪
- I liked that Ted was
very close to his family.
His parents were very involved
in their children's lives,
and that made me feel like
it would be nice
to marry into this type
of family.
Ted and I had been dating
over a year,
and I think we were 23 and 24.
♪ ♪
I was in my apartment.
And Ted was the kind of guy
that wasn't really comfortable
with his emotions.
So he proposed to me
by just giving me a big hug
and then on his finger
was the ring.
And he got down on his knee
and I did say yes.
♪ ♪
It was so sweet
because it was so Ted.
♪ ♪
- When Libby told me
they were engaged,
I was ecstatic for her,
because we'd always talked
about meeting that one,
and Libby had found that one.
♪ ♪
- Ted's parents took us
out to dinner
to celebrate our engagement
and his mom presented me
with a circle pearl pendant
and that meant
I was part of the family,
that the family was a circle.
And I liked that.
I liked feeling
a part of something.
[suspenseful music]
- As wonderful as Ted seemed,
Libby still saw
some troubling signs early on.
He was the kind of guy that
was easily irritated.
- When we got engaged,
we had an argument where he was
angry in a way
I hadn't seen before.
It stunned me.
I thought maybe he's not
the right person for me.
Problem was
my mother was so upset.
She's like, you know,
the invitations have gone out,
and what will everybody think?
And that's the way she was
growing up.
But she made it very obvious
that if
I called off the engagement,
that wouldn't
be very acceptable.
- The biggest thing everybody's
been asking me about is
are you nervous?
And I'm not really
that nervous.
I'm more nervous
speaking to you all now
than I am about
getting married, actually.
[laughter]
I met Libby
almost two years ago.
It was on my roommate
that I had to meet her,
and that worked out.
Libby, I love you very,
very much.
You are my best, best friend.
I love you.
all: Aw.
[applause]
- Our wedding was
a big wedding.
It was, to me, very elaborate,
nothing that
I thought I would ever have.
- It was beautiful.
It was a perfect June night.
- Libby and Ted,
this is Christine, as you know,
and I just want to let you know
that I wish you both many years
of happiness and success.
- I had a lot of fun
and I was so excited at the end
to be Mrs. Edward House.
I'll just tell Ted that
I love him very much.
I felt very proud.
I thought
I was going to have the life
that my parents never did.
This is a dream come true.
I just thought
everything was just going
to magically unfold for me.
And for a while,
I kind of felt like it did.
- It is not the question
of what will happen to you,
but it is a question of how
you will face what happens.
You will face it together.
- Unfortunately,
it would fall apart later.
After we got married, I got
pregnant
When we had our daughter,
I thought, I've got my family.
Like, I'm on my way.
- When their daughter was
ten months old,
Ted got a job
in the mortgage industry.
♪ ♪
- Ted excelled
in that business.
He was their top producer
and I was working full-time.
And then I woke up one morning
and I started to get a bad,
sharp pain in my lower back.
[tense music]
And I started to have pain
chronically.
Nothing alleviated it.
♪ ♪
Really, it was that
my lower level of my back.
It had deteriorated.
I had the spine
of somebody 60 years old
and I was in my 20s
and I needed a spinal fusion.
I had three back surgeries
in three years.
[somber music]
- Because of Libby's issues
with her back,
she couldn't sit for
extended periods of time,
and that made work pretty much
impossible for her.
- Ted said that
he made enough money
for me to be
a stay-at-home mom.
But looking back,
I did not keep an iron
in the workplace fire
so if anything ever happened,
I could always rely on myself,
and I didn't do that.
Ted took care of everything.
As far as paying bills,
our taxes.
I had a checking account
and he would put money
in that checking account.
He oversaw all of it.
- Libby was blissfully ignorant
of what their finances were.
- And that was
a colossal mistake on my part.
- At this point,
Ted is a very successful
mortgage loan officer.
So successful, he decides
to start a side business
flipping houses, and that
becomes really successful too.
- They were members
of the country club.
They traveled a lot.
- We were going to Costa Rica.
We were going
to Martha's Vineyard.
We were able to just take off
and go places.
I finally had that life
that I wanted,
that I dreamed about
in high school.
And I was happy.
- Ted was always busy
juggling family life
and flipping houses,
but he appeared to be handling
it like a pro.
For a while, anyway.
- In 2002, there was a house
for sale in Indian Hills.
[suspenseful music]
- Indian Hills was one
of the nicest places
that you could live.
The area is great.
The homes were very expensive,
very hard to get in.
- Ted bought the house and
we put our house up for sale.
And I was kind of surprised,
because he sold it
to his business partner,
Khalid.
I met Khalid a couple of times
and he was an imposing figure,
a giant man.
♪ ♪
- Ted had searched for me.
Heard that I was active
in the West End,
and he was looking to get into
different areas of the city.
- Ted said that Khalid was
very good at flipping houses,
but some were
in bad parts of town
and Khalid was from the area of
town where these houses were.
♪ ♪
- What I was supposed to do
was finding properties,
buyers, sellers,
and I take them
straight to Ted.
And we closed a lot of deals.
- Once we had settled into
the house in Indian Hills,
we started renovations.
And then all of a sudden,
Ted started to experience what
he called work stress.
[tense music]
Things would aggravate him
that didn't used
to aggravate him.
It wasn't like it was one day.
Everybody has a bad day.
This was all the time.
- There appeared to be
some cracks in the marriage.
Ted was a great guy,
wonderful, wonderful father,
and then there was a switch
and Ted became somebody that
she didn't recognize anymore.
- It was like he was
in a panic all the time.
He would wake up at like 3:00
in the morning
every single morning.
He would be on the computer.
I'm like, what is so pressing?
And that would anger Ted
very quickly.
And he would start
belittling me,
yelling at me,
calling me names.
- He just always blamed it
on the stress of work,
and she had absolutely
no idea to the extent
of what he was
even talking about.
♪ ♪
- One day, he had his hands
resting on the sink.
He looked like he was crying.
And he goes,
he's gonna screw me over.
I don't know what
that Khalid will do.
And I go, I'm not sure
what we're talking about.
What do you mean?
And he looked at me
and he goes,
that guy might k*ll you
and our daughter.
- When Ted told me what Khalid
might do, I was terrified.
[tense music]
And I didn't think
I heard that right.
I go, what do you mean when
you say he could k*ll us?
And Ted just said,
he's got me involved
in something.
And I kept asking,
why would you think
somebody that you work with,
that you like
and you say is successful,
would want to k*ll your wife
and daughter?
But he didn't explain it.
He just said, I'm going to go
to the office, and he left.
I was so shocked
and I didn't know what to do.
And I start just
a flood of emotion.
I'm just crying.
♪ ♪
- She called Ted's parents.
If there was anyone that
was going to be concerned,
it would be them.
- I was so panicked,
I could barely
get through the conversation.
My heart was beating
and I was expecting
this reaction that was
dramatic, the way I felt.
But Ted's mother wasn't
like that.
And she said,
we talked to Ted.
She goes,
Khalid didn't say that.
It's just Ted got scared.
And he realizes
that he's been consorting
with somebody he shouldn't,
and he was just not going to
do business with him anymore.
And I believed that.
But I felt like my
mother-in-law was saying to me,
don't step out of line.
Toe the rope here.
And I did.
- I don't know why
Ted chose to do that.
He knew he was lying on me.
I would never come for Libby
or anybody else.
♪ ♪
- After a period of time,
Ted seems to change.
[peaceful music]
- It seemed like the
work stress dissipated.
And I didn't know
if that was because
Ted and Khalid had
parted ways,
because he refused to talk
to me about it.
But he was more laid-back
and we were having
a better time together.
♪ ♪
But then Ted got angry at me
at an antique mall
because I bought
this antique platter.
And I don't think it was very
much money, maybe like $50.
And he threw such a fit
about this platter.
He exploded.
I just didn't understand
how we bought this house
that was close to $1 million,
and he cared about
this platter.
And I had on my sunglasses
and he got so mad
that he ripped them off,
crumpled them in his hand,
and threw him out the window.
And that cut the side
right here on my nose.
He was just escalating.
♪ ♪
- She certainly was feeling
the brunt of Ted's irritability
and his outbursts.
She knew definitely that
things weren't right.
- One night, Libby was
watching a program on TV
and she heard
this woman's story
about her white-collar husband
keeping her in the dark
about finances.
And Libby saw herself
in that woman,
and she started
asking Ted questions.
- I decided that I wanted Ted
to make a folder for me
explaining where
all our money was,
all the bank accounts,
and he wouldn't do it.
And I couldn't understand.
And I kept asking him
and he would get madder
and madder and madder
at me about it.
And it got worse
and worse and worse.
And then one day, he got
so angry at me that he leaves,
and it was three days
before Christmas.
♪ ♪
Ted moved into an apartment
and I stayed at the house
with my daughter.
- I was shocked when
Libby told me that
they were getting separated
because they had such a good
marriage as far as I thought.
[somber music]
- One day when my daughter
was at school,
he charges in the house
and he tells me that we were
in financial trouble,
that he had made
some bad business decisions,
and that we were going
to need to sell the house.
[clock ticking]
We put our house up for sale
very quickly.
I was crushed.
I put my heart and soul into
renovations on that house.
It was humiliating.
If he needed money,
I would have thought he would
have gone to his parents.
But he said that
he didn't want to
and he wouldn't tell me why.
And then Ted told me that
we needed to go see
a bankruptcy attorney...
[tense music]
That we were going
to have to file bankruptcy
and there would be
complete liquidation.
I couldn't believe it.
I just didn't know
how much worse
it was going to get.
T ed and I had been married
for 12 years
and we just could
not get along.
♪ ♪
But when we were separated,
I thought some time away
would bring
some sort of clarity to him
where he would understand
why I needed to know
about our finances.
But we just ended up
putting our house up for sale
because of what he called
bad business decisions.
♪ ♪
- She was cut off financially.
Ted was handling
all the financials.
She had $11
in her bank account.
- Libby confronts Ted
and she asks him for money
for groceries.
- Ted told me
to use our debit card,
and when I went to pay,
there was no money there.
It wasn't just to feed myself.
It was to feed our daughter.
And I called Ted and he said,
"Get a J-O-B, b*tch."
[tense music]
- Sure, someone needs a job.
What bothers me
is the c*ck attitude.
Are you just going to
leave them high and dry
and laugh about it?
Yeah,
that's exactly what he did.
It's puzzling.
- I couldn't understand
the way he treated me.
And things just continued
to get worse.
I was like,
I'm going to file for divorce.
♪ ♪
- Shortly after
filing for divorce,
Libby starts getting calls
from creditors.
♪ ♪
There are accounts that were
opened in her name,
such as car loans
and credit cards
that she had never opened,
never signed for.
♪ ♪
- Before we separated,
Ted had gotten me an SUV
that I loved.
♪ ♪
One day, Ted had come
to the house and he said,
there's something I left you
back in the guest bedroom.
♪ ♪
I walked back there.
There's nothing there.
And when I came out,
Ted had taken my car.
♪ ♪
He didn't care.
He had no remorse whatsoever.
No worry about
taking care of his family.
- The bank called me and said
they were looking for that SUV
that Ted took because
they want to repossess it.
And I told the representative
what happened,
but he said,
you better locate this vehicle.
You're the guarantor.
I go, I never signed anything.
He goes, I have the paperwork.
So I got a copy
and I see my name,
except it's not my signature.
It was forged.
I said,
that's not my signature.
He did not care.
He's like, well,
you were married.
But I did not give up
my identity at the altar.
It doesn't matter
that I was his wife.
I didn't sign it.
I don't know what happened
with that SUV,
but finally, at some point,
the bank stopped calling me.
[tense music]
One day, I came home to find
Ted standing
by the kitchen table.
And he said,
I've called my attorney,
and I've told him that
I've called off the divorce.
Then he said,
I wrote this letter to you.
And in that letter,
he's telling me
how much he loved me,
how he wanted
to stay together,
how he would make sure
that I knew all about
his business practices.
He said, I will educate you.
I will show you.
Really,
everything I was asking for,
all that was in this letter.
[soft suspenseful music]
By the time he asked me
to come back,
being apart from him
gave me a little confidence
that I didn't have.
I wasn't getting
berated anymore.
I said, you know, Ted, I'm not
going to stay married to you.
We ended up getting divorced
on September 14th, 2005.
♪ ♪
In the divorce settlement,
Ted's parents had a condo,
and I was going to be allowed
to live there just two years
and I was going to get
child support.
The child support started
at $1,200 a month
and Ted got it reduced.
♪ ♪
To $149 a month.
Not a week, a month.
- That was obscene.
[tense music]
- That's maybe
a week's worth of groceries,
so she was always trying
to scrape by.
- My life was on fire.
I just couldn't understand
what was going on with Ted
and why he had no money.
♪ ♪
- Libby realized that
she wasn't going
to get answers from Ted,
but she knows that she can go
to the Louisville rumor mill.
Someone's got to know
something here.
And she was right.
It was a friend's husband
who was an attorney
that said, hey,
he's being investigated.
[tense music]
- He said Ted was
being investigated by the FBI
because he's involved
in a fraud scheme.
♪ ♪
I was so shocked.
I couldn't make sense of it.
♪ ♪
I asked, Ted, are you
being investigated by the FBI?
And he goes, if I go down,
I'm taking you with me.
You're a co-conspirator.
And I'm like, to what?
- Ted and I had
had an altercation
when I asked him if he was
being investigated by the FBI.
[indistinct shouting]
And he had told me that
he was taking me down.
And he'd never threatened me
like that.
It scared me.
So I called an attorney,
and he said that
we needed to talk to the FBI.
And then he took me to
the U.S. attorney's office.
They asked me some questions.
And of course, I said,
I don't know, you know,
much of anything.
And they said Ted's involved
in mortgage fraud
and he was
in very serious trouble.
I'm like, that's what
this was the whole time.
♪ ♪
So I pulled out, you know,
the letter.
- Libby was trying
to show the investigators
that the letter that Ted wrote
to her to get her back
actually proved
she didn't know anything.
[tense music]
- And then the agents
left the room.
And that just felt
like an eternity
'cause I didn't know
what they thought of me.
And I was so nervous.
♪ ♪
And then they came back in
and the lead agent says,
you're only guilty
of trusting your husband.
[tense music fading]
I mean, it was like
a sigh of relief.
[tense music]
- The investigation
into Ted's crimes
was part of
a much broader effort
by the FBI
to investigate mortgage fraud.
We were having a housing boom
across the country,
and then mortgage rates
went very low.
So it became so competitive
that the underwriting
standards got loosened.
So this was a new fraud,
and it's a document-heavy
investigation.
It can take years sometimes.
♪ ♪
- In July 2007,
Ted was charged
with conspiracy
to commit mortgage fraud,
bank fraud, and wire fraud.
These charges could yield
a sentence of 18 months
to 8 1/2 years.
- White-collar crimes
are crimes of greed, not need.
Ted was college-educated.
He was well-known
in his community.
His parents, you know,
well-established family.
He had connections.
He had money.
He could have gone off
and made a legitimate life
for himself and his family.
But fraud was a path
he chose to take.
- Ted got greedy
and he didn't have to.
A lot of the people
that use drugs
or they got a gambling habit.
I never saw that with Ted.
Ted was drunk off of money.
- I still didn't understand
the full scope
of what he had done.
But what I did learn is that
Ted had never
cut off relations with Khalid.
And he, too,
was indicted along with Ted.
- I saw no red flags up front.
But I remember one time,
we got a loan done that I
didn't think would go through.
And I'm saying, what lender
did we use for that?
Ted said,
don't even worry about that.
We did something that
we're only going to do once.
I shouldn't have, but I closed
my eyes on whatever it was
until the indictments
start coming out
and I'm like,
ah, come on, bro.
♪ ♪
Ted falsified documents that
had nothing to do with me.
♪ ♪
- Ted would buy
a very cheap house,
usually in
a depressed neighborhood,
then resell the house
at a very inflated price
and get what's called
a straw buyer
to go in
and sign the paperwork.
- It's simple.
A fake buyer signs documents
to buy a home
for much more than it's worth.
- Ted would get that fake buyer
approved for a fake loan
using fake documents,
and a fake appraisal.
So he could buy it for 30,000
and then he would have
this fake loan approved
by the lenders
that he worked with.
He was a mortgage loan officer.
And he would
get that loan approved
as if the house was valued
at $75,000.
It's really only worth 30,000.
So he would get 75,000 bucks.
He would then pay off
that 30,000
to the real guy he actually
bought the house from.
And then there's $45,000 left
and he would
pocket the difference.
♪ ♪
- We don't do it once.
We do it again
and again and again,
and sometimes
two or three of these
were happening within a week.
Ted made millions of dollars
through these
fraudulent transactions.
♪ ♪
- When the first payment
comes due,
that straw buyer disappears,
so eventually, the banks
are experiencing losses
and they refer that over
to the FBI.
- I think that he thought
because of who he was
and the connections he had
that I can do what I want
and there's really
no accountability.
- Most people are embarrassed
getting caught in a crime,
but this emboldened Ted.
You know, he thought of himself
as almost a celebrity.
- I asked him why, how--
I wanted him
to tell me something
because it affected me
and my daughter
and it affected my life
profoundly.
But never,
never would say that he did it.
Never.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Some people would talk
about him in front of me like,
oh, he just made a mistake
at work.
And I'd think,
a mistake at work?
My whole life has been upended.
And then I also remember
getting asked a million times,
you didn't know?
I hated that question.
Yes, I knew.
I knew all about the fraud.
You want to go to lunch now?
♪ ♪
- Libby learned
that she wasn't alone.
She found a community
of other women
that were married
to white-collar criminals,
and there were a lot of them.
- Libby and I met through
this great support group
that she has
helped me cultivate
for innocent spouses.
The support group is now
on five continents.
The majority of us
lived middle-class lives,
but the white-collar criminals
we tend to hear about
are the big, big-deal guys,
the Bernie Madoffs,
but there's 5,000 white-collar
cases indicted a year.
♪ ♪
And then when the husband has
been indicted criminally,
these women are
so stigmatized.
- I was a social pariah.
People no longer
make eye contact with you
in the grocery store.
And phone stops ringing.
They didn't understand.
♪ ♪
- And I think that initially,
there's kind of this
justification that perps make
that, oh,
I'm doing it for my family
to make their lives better.
It's going to be for them.
But looking
at all the detriment,
all the horrors,
all the disasters
that this has caused,
everybody pays the price.
You're doing it to
your family.
Your actions puts them
in dire straits financially,
emotionally, physically.
- Being tried in the court
of public opinion
is one of the worst things
because you're
sentenced by them,
but you never get a chance
to speak for yourself.
♪ ♪
And then I found out even more
stuff that Ted did to me
that would add
a whole new layer to my life
that was already
falling apart.
- In my mind, I thought,
oh, there'll be a trial,
and I'll get
to see how this started.
But I was never in a courtroom,
because there was
never a trial.
Because in the end,
Ted pleads guilty.
Ted could have been sentenced
to 8 1/2 years.
- Ultimately,
Ted was sentenced to 18 months
and 3 years' probation.
♪ ♪
- He got the minimum, and
he was very happy about that.
He told me that
everyone clapped.
I felt like he was
like the hero, you know.
Yay, Ted.
And I thought,
you destroyed my life.
- He orchestrated
all of this stuff
with all
these different parties,
and he only did 18 months.
Isn't that crazy?
- Khalid also pled guilty
and was sentenced
to 25 months in prison.
- In the mid-'80s,
I jumped into the drug game.
I did time in prison.
And so I was
facing 1,040 months.
- If you cooperated,
then you took
that sentencing guideline down.
- I went ahead
and pled guilty.
So I accepted responsibility.
The judge said,
we know you didn't do this,
but you had some knowledge
of something somewhere,
and that was
a correct statement.
- While Ted was in jail,
Libby was trying
to rebuild her life.
She had no money.
[somber music]
And in a moment
of desperation,
she called Ted's mother
and asked
for financial assistance.
- $300 a month to help pay
for our daughter's school.
And her exact response was,
no, you're getting $149.
That's what the courts say.
- I think they figured
Libby's got her own,
you know, family,
and they'll take care of her.
So that was kind of
a closed door to her.
- I just felt so betrayed.
I did.
♪ ♪
In the middle of my daughter's
high school years,
Ted would get out of prison.
♪ ♪
And he was out having
the best time in Louisville.
It's almost like
I got a prison sentence
much longer than he did
because I watched him just
climb easily right back up.
Not so much for me.
I never financially rebounded.
♪ ♪
Ted always had a roof
over his head.
He moved right into
his parents' condo,
driving his Mercedes,
driving a Range Rover.
- He was laughing about it
and living the big life.
♪ ♪
- I believe people can change.
I don't know with him.
I've not spoken to him
in ten years.
That's because years
after he got out of prison,
I would find out that
he used me in his fraud scheme.
♪ ♪
A friend called me
and said, Libby,
you might want to check
on land deed records.
You might find yourself there.
So when I did,
I saw the deed
and I saw my name.
It said Libby House.
I knew that wasn't
my signature.
My legal name is Elizabeth.
I never sign my name Libby
on any legal document.
And it was notarized.
And I see tons of deeds
with my forged signature.
And I thought, oh my God,
this makes so much sense.
That's why Ted,
all those years ago,
was saying
you're a co-conspirator,
because he made me one.
On paper, it looked like
I helped facilitate that fraud.
I just couldn't understand it
because, you know,
there's a closing.
You have to present IDs.
I wasn't there.
I called the notary
specifically,
and she told me that someone
had to have impersonated me.
And then she said, I'm going
to have to get a lawyer.
And I was like, well, do that.
- Yeah.
- After Libby started
discovering all of this,
she fought for eight years to
get an amendment to the deeds.
It states that
her name was forged.
- In order
to amend the online deeds,
you have to petition the court
to do that,
because they're the holders
of the records.
I applaud Libby
for doing that,
because that's not easy to do.
- Ted, man,
when he was saving himself,
he sacrificed everything
and everybody around him.
Coward.
We had a good business,
and we made some good money.
He didn't have to do
the deception and the deceit,
the lies, and the betrayal.
Now, as far as Libby,
she had his back.
She loved that man.
I'm sorry that
she had to go through that.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- Financial crime
is extremely invasive.
I mean, her credit was
completely destroyed.
She had no money.
Employers would run her credit
or could do a background check
and see everything
that was going on,
and so they didn't trust her.
♪ ♪
- I felt bad about myself
for such a long time,
but I feel good
about myself now.
I have a job today.
I wrote a book,
because my story's
a cautionary tale.
Being financially illiterate
was horrible.
[soft upbeat music]
- You put a lot of trust
in Ted.
- I did.
I put a lot of trust.
I didn't plan for anything bad
to happen.
You need to think ahead.
You need to rely on yourself.
♪ ♪
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