August 1 – Florida Couple Organized Lavish Wedding Celebration at Mansion Without Owner’s Permission

When a Florida man meets the Florida woman of his dreams, everyone in their circle expects to be invited to some kind of post-wedding reception; moreover, there is an unwritten expectation about the celebration being as posh as possible, even if setting up the event involves getting into shenanigans. Such was the case with Courtney Wilson, a Florida man who reconnected with Shenita Jones 30 years after a brief romantic fling that did not progress beyond their senior year of high school.

Wilson proposed to Jones at a pizzeria in South Florida. They started making plans for the wedding soon after the proposal, and Wilson remembered seeing an opulent mansion selling for $5.7 million in the upscale Southwest Ranches district of Fort Lauderdale. The property belonged to Nathal Finkel, heir to the fortune built by his father Abe, who was one of the earliest franchise operators of the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) dining chain in Florida.

Wilson contacted the Realtor in charge of that listing and toured the nine-bedroom estate with a swimming pool, gazebo, and bowling alley. He then asked the agent if he could use the vacant estate, which spans 7.5 acres next to a small nature preserve and was fully furnished, to host his wedding party. Finkel’s attorney checked with the owner, and the answer was no, but this did not stop Wilson and Jones from planning their dream wedding therein. They even had elaborate invitations printed for guests who would get to enjoy a catered feast, dancing, and lounging by the pool.

The Florida couple’s plan crumbled on the morning of their planned wedding. As they were setting up for the event, Finkel was watching them from a smaller house in the estate. When confronted by Finkel and later by police officers, Wilson said it was God’s plan to host the wedding there.

See Also:

• Florida Man Report – July 31
• Florida Man Headlines – July 30
• Florida Man News – July 29

August 1 – Florida Woman Claimed to Own Google After Getting Caught With Methamphetamine

A woman with a long rap sheet and a history of methamphetamine abuse told the police officers who arrested her for trespassing and assault that she was the owner of several businesses, including internet search giant Google. Lora Beth Seymour, a 42-year-old resident of Summerfield in Marion County, had been previously arrested in two other counties for battery, but her criminal activity and methamphetamine addiction began to worsen after she moved to Summerfield, where she began to walk into the yards of private homes around her neighborhood.

Seymour reportedly sought backyards with electrical outlets on the outside of the home so that she could charge her smartphone during long sessions of methamphetamine abuse. She racked up trespass warnings until she returned to a home where she had been caught sleeping a few days before. The Florida woman tripped over garden planters at night, thus waking up the homeowners and sparking an altercation after she refused to leave.

When deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office responded to reports of a woman throwing garden ornaments and other objects from a home onto the street, they recognized Seymour from her previous arrests. As she was being arrested and placed in the back of the squad car, her ball cap fell off, thus revealing that she had stashed a small packet of methamphetamine wrapped in aluminum foil. During the incident, Seymour cut her arm after breaking a window of the home where she was arrested, and she somehow blamed the property owner for her slight injuries.

A pattern that has emerged in the criminal history of this Florida woman is that she always claims to not understand what is happening during her arrests. This is when she usually starts making outlanding statements such as owning Google.