BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – A man whose wife reported him missing to the Indian Harbour Beach Police Department last year — amid a saga of what she believed were ransom payments she was making to a cartel that abducted him — now faces charges in the “secret life” investigators say he was really living.
Eric Johnson, 29, is accused of bilking his wife out of more than $50,000 by texting her while pretending to be other people and lying about his so-called involvement in a nondescript cartel.
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Johnson’s wife made the missing persons report Dec. 14, 2023, telling police that her husband had been missing since Dec. 12 and that she had been receiving text messages for months from an unidentified individual demanding large sums of money by insinuating harm would come to Johnson if she failed to make the payments to her husband’s CashApp account. She added Johnson would be driving a Jeep that was registered solely to her.
Investigators noted no signs of foul play at the couple’s shared residence. Police learned that the two had been wed for 11 months at the time, a span in which Johnson had begun to pile stories onto his wife about a “large quantity of cocaine” he said he lost while running it for a drug cartel. This was the backstory that police say Johnson fabricated in order to convince his wife that he owed a cartel some $60,000 in drug money. Johnson told his wife to tell no one about what was happening, accepting her help for what she thought were drug debt payments as she claimed her husband otherwise had a habit of doing cocaine, police said.
The wife told police that she had been receiving the strange and threatening text messages for around six months, what investigators would later align with a six-month period of unemployment that Johnson was experiencing as an out-of-work welder. In the last two months of this timespan, she told police that the “debt” rhetoric intensified into “ransom” situations in which Johnson would disappear until she sent the money. Every time he got back, however, she said Johnson would not disclose much information about where he was, who he was with and what he was doing, according to an affidavit.
The police department included excerpts in the affidavit from the wife’s conversations with a 575 area code phone number. Some of the statements include, “You have 10 minutes to send 600 dollars to your husbands cash app for him messing up my business... I’m sure he had said it was over many times but this is his last payment,” “I’m running from whoever your husband sent after me,” and, “500 now or buenas noches,” to share a few from October 2023. Even by December, around the time Johnson was reported missing, his wife was still apparently pleading with the unknown abductor to spare Johnson’s life and to reassure her he was OK. She told police that she called law enforcement for help only once her bank account had dwindled to $1.71 and she could no longer pay the demands, as her CashApp account showed more than $70,000 had been transferred from her to Johnson from May 2020 to Dec. 2023.
Johnson was listed as missing and endangered, with the police department also issuing a BOLO for the wife’s Jeep. According to investigators, the Jeep’s license plate was spotted 16 times between Dec. 12 and Dec. 14 throughout Brevard County. The evening of Dec. 14, the Jeep was seen on U.S. 192 and Johnson’s wife received a text message within the half hour stating, “He’s coming,” police said.
A traffic stop was then conducted as the Jeep pulled into the Parkside Place community in Indian Harbour Beach, police said. Johnson was driving the Jeep and was its only occupant, noted by police as appearing safe, healthy and in no danger. He was arrested at the time regarding a charge of knowingly driving with a suspended license, the affidavit states.
When asked if he was being held captive, Johnson said no, he wasn’t, according to the affidavit. When pressed on what number his wife was being texted the threats from, Johnson said it was himself using a rented phone number, and when investigators asked if his plan was to get money from his wife — also asking him why he would do it — Johnson said it was, adding he had a drug problem.
A search of Johnson’s cell phone turned up further evidence of his whereabouts and actions at the time he was briefly considered missing and endangered, police said:
As evidenced by the numerous chat sessions Eric Johnson had during the time he was allegedly “kidnapped” between 12/12/23 and 12/14/23, Eric Johnson was completely in control of himself, was not being held by anyone, and drove alone to Winter Garden, FL to meet with (...) a female he was sexting with.
State of Florida vs. Eric Paul Johnson | Affidavit for arrest warrant | Indian Harbour Beach Police Department | filed Jan. 30, 2024 | pg. 17 (excerpt)
Johnson was booked Thursday at the Brevard County Jail and faces charges of fraud to obtain property at or above $50,000, threats involving extortion and blackmail, grand theft over $100,000 and using a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony, records show.
He made his first appearance in court Friday afternoon, where a judge ordered he be held on $24,000 bond and have no contact with the victim. Johnson pleaded not guilty, was determined to be indigent and was appointed a public defender.
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