Florida businessman fakes his demise in international plot

everyone in Jacksonville Florida Newlin Teague was face the owner of discount furniture stores his commercials for the circle-k chain even made him a local celebrity America we have a choice we can't save our country and selling dining-room tables and bedroom sets made LAN Tigua very rich would you say it was a millionaire he told me he was he said that he had millions Crimewatch Daly sitting down with LAN Teague was wife Daphne in an exclusive interview about the man she thought was her knight in shining armor he was a really fascinating person very kind very thoughtful Daphne Simpson is a deeply religious woman her first husband was a pastor and like many singles Daphne logged on for love hoping to meet a nice sky through a Christian dating site it wasn't long before a match was made in heaven with the successful Cuban immigrant turned furniture King when I told the girls at work you know that I had gone out with this particular gentleman and they were like oh my gosh you know he's so awesome he's you know great person here in the community he's contributed to so many you know the charities and everything Daphne who's originally from Texas moved to Jacksonville and when she went back to the Lone Star State to visit her kids they could tell she was smitten with her new Romeo she was I mean just so giddy and tell me about this amazing man that she had met and at how much she liked him after four months of dating Daphne's Cuban Casanova popped the question it was in his usual grand style at a fancy restaurant with long-stemmed red roses and champagne on ice waiting tableside sounds like a TV show The Bachelorette oh right I know I was like whoa it just blew me away after dinner Jose gets down on bended knee and out comes the only thing sweeter than chocolate covered strawberries a five carat diamond engagement ring that's a big ring yeah it was it was like I said very Wow it was huge very blingy was your mom in love with him oh yeah absolutely she was I would say infatuated with him and why wouldn't she be Jose was divorced his children grown adults Daphne says he rolled out the red carpet for her own adult children even inviting them to move into his mini mansion on exclusive Fleming Island an upscale coastal community about 15 miles from Jacksonville he brought all of us into his fold my sisters myself immediately he was like you know I want you guys to move here and it's a Florida Jose even dazzled Daphne and her kids with intriguing stories about his past as a high-ranking military officer but he embellished those tales saying he worked with the CIA carrying out top-secret missions in South America I was like have you killed people before what kind of operations did you do so he would tell me in depth everyone's future looked bright especially when LAN Tigua made circle-k a family business giving the kids jobs it was one big Brady Bunch in the making it was like we were one beautiful big happy family the pair honeymooned in north carolina where they quickly snapped up a rustic mountain retreat beautiful views I mean it was gorgeous he wanted to start renovating on it and renovate they did they even building of all things a panic room just like in the movies a secret lair completely concealed to the naked eye so he had the safe room built so that the family would be safe we could all go up there if you know chaos broke out Daphne was living a dream come true the newly blended family enjoyed vacations celebrated holidays together and welcomed new grandchildren into the world I mean honestly he sounds perfect yeah that's what I thought I thought wow and he you know told me we're soul mates but the dream of a marriage was about to become a nightmare Daphne says just a few months later Jose drops a shocker telling her he's dying from a rare condition called CJD better known as mad cow disease so he told you he had mad cow disease yes how did he go about explaining this he has me in his arms and he says I have something I have to tell you I have CJD and I didn't even know what CJD was and he explained that it was a brain disease and that there was no cure for it nothing could be done and that he had maybe 6 months to live and I remember I started bawling because we'd only been married for a short time and now I think he's dying and that I'm only gonna have six more months with him Daphne says Jose told her he contracted the disease while he was in the military and had to eat monkey brains while on assignment in the jungle he said that one of the missions that they had gone on he had to interact with the locals where he had been the guest of honor and therefore you had to eat what's given to you and he had eaten raw monkey brains at that time you spoke with the doctor yes I did and what did the doctor tell you that he had CJD and he would answer any questions I had we went to an MRI clinic and he had an MRI done of his brain did he show you the MRI or any x-rays or anything I did look at it but I didn't know I mean it had a bunch of white spots everywhere so I just assumed you know that's part of the disease Daphne and Jose went to Miami breaking the devastating news to their extended family members but not long after they get home Jose makes a completely different and even more shocking admission to Daphne he sat me down and said has something to tell you I needed to let you know that all that stuff I told you about the CJD was a lie and I did it to protect the family and I didn't want anybody to know what the real truth was to protect you sun-lee Jose writes up a dark second chapter in his story antigua tells his wife Daphne my background is catching up on me Jose Antigua was considered the furniture king of Jacksonville Florida but he was about to lose his crown he looked amazing and treated me like I was a princess Daphne's prince charming was dying he said from mad cow disease he explained that it was a brain disease and that there was no cure for it no nothing he could be done and that he had maybe six months to live but Jose's twisted tale of having mad cow had just one fatal flaw it was all a load of bull Daphne tells me Jose lied about his fatal disease for the wildest of reasons Jose told her his past as a CIA special ops agent south of the border was dangerously haunting him he claimed a Mexican drug cartel ordered a revenge hit and he needed to protect the family I was terrified but I didn't want my children's lives to be in danger and I believed him because what why would you lie about something like that to your wife but as you're about to see they were all tall tales Daphne says she had no idea her husband was in debt up to his lying eyeballs his seemingly successful circle-k furniture chain had been in the red for years do you believe that at one point in his life he really was successful and had a lot of money I don't know again that could be a lie too right I don't know what everything he told me I don't know what's true anymore it seems Jose owed the bank's millions of dollars after taking out loans he couldn't repay instead of filing for bankruptcy assistant US attorney Mark Devereaux says Jose concocted an elaborate plan to rake in over eight million dollars in life insurance payouts he thinks it's gonna everything's gonna be better just like the gambler I'll win the next hand but it doesn't and in order to get the insurance companies to cough up the cash Jose how to fake his own death so he closed up shop and told his family he was going to Venezuela for treatment but he needed Daphne's health to pull off the plan we needed a conspirator a co-conspirator and it ended up being his wife but he knew his wife and he knew that if he told her the truth she wouldn't have jumped onboard so he tricked her we've all heard there's no honor amongst thieves here he had no honor and he was very cruel and what he told his wife to convince Daphne to help him Lanta guo whipped up a tale of death so outlandish it could be ripped from the pages of a spy novel Antigua tells us wife Daphne my background is catching up on me as I told you I was a Special Forces operations officer that actually took out and assassinated a cartel leader in South America I was the team leader and I need to fake my death now otherwise my life is at risk in your life and your family as well meanwhile Antigua had Daphne's kids hoodwinked into believing he was going to Venezuela for experimental treatment for mad cow disease the crafty conman even wrote a personal letter to his kids preparing for his imminent death he had left a letter in his personal effects for me to share with the family stating that he didn't want to pass away in front of his family he wanted to be alone so they would remember him as he was you know when he was still healthy and wouldn't you know it months after disappearing deep in the jungles of South America LAN Tigua drops dead or so he said at any point are there any red flags going off oh yeah the whole time I mean when you don't see a body and then they just disappear it's weird you know to just disappear than die in a foreign country but LAN Tigua moved pretty well for a dead guy while in Venezuela he ends up purchasing death certificate has a doctor sign he ends up also purchasing a certificate of cremation Daphne is instructed to tell her kids that she's flying to Venezuela to collect his ashes she boards the plane loaded with about $20,000 in cash what was that money for he had told me it was to to get the the records that they needed to show that he was dead the couple goes to the US Embassy in Venezuela to get a certificate of death a document Daphne will need to get the eight million in insurance he's outside the embassy waiting for you you're inside the American Embassy in Venezuela with his death certificate trying to get it approved yeah wow that really takes a lot of to pull off everything he did takes a lot I don't know how you can do what he did and wake up every morning not hating yourself at this point Daphne claims she's just protecting the family and has no idea about her husband's plan to rip off the insurance companies Antigua tows Daphne Daphne you have to do this if you don't go through everything it's gonna be clear to the cartel that I'm not dead but back in Jacksonville as the children are processing their step dad's death Daphne had become a pawn in her husband's wicked game you come back with a death certificate you come back with a box of something that could be dirt but everyone's supposed to believe it's your husband's remains and what do you do do you have a funeral no his son did a memorial service he ends up having his wife do all the things that a grieving widow would do and it's all a sham and shortly after the memorial service LAN Tigua miraculously rose from the dead telling Daphne to hire a lawyer to start the insurance claims on seven that's right seven policies how many times do you have a situation where a person is so bold to use a federal court a presidentially appointed judge to basically unknowingly assist them in their fraud for eight million dollars that takes some guts or stupidity stupid would be an understatement from his secret hideaway in a South American jungle Hosea Antigua did something probably no other person on the planet could do he read his own obituary I started bawling because we'd only been married for a short time Hosea Antigua says he died but he's the dead man talking he says mad cow disease killed him or so he wanted his life insurance company to believe this is a very unique insurance fraud because in order to accomplish this and be a success one has to cut their ties and basically be a lone wolf for the rest of their lives and say goodbye to their family and loved ones and that's a hard thing to do if not almost impossible the feds say Jose faked his own death paying off local Venezuelans to create a paper trail and even conning his wife Daphne into helping him pull off the scam and how long did this lie go on for way too long a long time that was the hardest I mean to lie to my kids my family but I thought I was protecting them protecting them she was led to think from a Mexican druglord with revenge on his mind you think that's how he manipulated you oh I'm sure he knew how much family meant to me and how much I loved my children and my grandchildren and what Daphne did next sounds like a plot out of a hit thriller we then learn daphne travels to the Bahamas on a Carnival Cruise Line that leaves out of Jacksonville it leaves here twice a week she carried money she met with lan Tigre and Daphne then returns back on the cruise ship the Bahamas how was that part of the plan he had been telling me that he wanted me to come and see him in the Bahamas he wanted he'd missed me he wanted to see me said you know just come for a week so we can be together and at this time I'm madly in love with him still not realizing what he had been doing even though Daphne insisted she wasn't in on any scam she immediately filed the claims on Jose's policy after returning to the United States that's when insurance adjustors smelled a rat the beneficiaries are saying pay up and the surance company saying you haven't proved that your dad is dead the only proof Jose died this official-looking venezuelan death certificate but suspicious insurance fraud investigators dove into the thick of the jungle in search of the truth first red flag that we had was the fact that mr. LAN Tiwi wasn't apparently an affluent individual had actually travelled to Venezuela a country that was basically in a civil war to obtain medical treatment the clues Richard marques and his pis found laid out like breadcrumbs in a fractured fairy tale another red flag that we noticed immediately was that he had allegedly passed away in a very small town in the remote location approximately two hours away from Caracas and we thought that was very suspicious once we arrived into town we found out that he was allegedly staying at a lodge they had not been in operation for several years of course Jose had no clue they were hot on the trail of his cold body his forged death documents decomposing like a fake corpse in the humid Venezuelan heat he dies in the location a and it's five days later is when he's cremated a body in five days in the heat in Venezuela would not be a good site it would blow and it would smell investigators are told that LAN Teague was body was driven 250 miles from where he supposedly died to a crematorium in another town one more red flag given there were dozens of crematoriums closer the cremation manager initially told us that he had in fact cremated the body after a couple days of interviewed interviewing him and pointing out some discrepancies he had no recourse but to tell the truth that he had in fact never received the body he had never in fact cremated the body that he had swept the floor of some ashes and debris put it in an urn and shipped it to the family to the wife and then the first tangible clue that Hosea Antigua is in fact alive remember that death certificate investigators discover it was also fraudulent it's identified somewhat easily by somebody that knows what they're looking for and that's because they didn't have a notary process there's a number on that documents and it has to correspond to a notaries book they go to try to find word and that the notaries book is there isn't one they start doing more interviews and what they're able to establish is he isn't dead josé's elaborate plan was about to topple like a house of cards we can only hit people with one thing the facts and the facts never lie the agents track down the doctor who signed the bogus death certificate he threw us out of his office several times but we kept going back and ultimately told us hey listen okay so the truth is I never saw this person and I have never met him before I never examined him and the funeral home people act as a favor ask me to sign the death certificate but I had never met this person back in the States Daphne says she was still haunted by the specter of the drug cartel at this point do you think that there are people following you I was always so paranoid because he told me you know you've got to watch out every time I'm driving I'm looking in the mirror thinking is somebody following me meanwhile attorneys from both sides were battling it out over the eight million dollar payout they file with a motion in federal court here in Jacksonville for a declaratory judgment finding that the insurance companies don't have to pay the insurance because he's not dead they haven't provided sufficient proof of death and so at that point in time we know or have firm evidence really that he's not dead now the question is where is he but no one really knows where the fully alive slippery scam artist is hiding Hosea Antigua is laying low in his secret hideaway in Venezuela he went through quite a bit of trouble and paying quite a few people who corroborated their story to show that he actually passed away but now Jose is about to do something even more dramatic than rising from his own dead ashes apparently mr. Len Teague was an extremely convincing storyteller by sneaking back into the United States line Tigua then pays $5,000 to get a boat ride because it's just about 60 miles off the coast for Nassau across to Fort Lauderdale he takes a greyhound up i-95 comes to Jacksonville stays at an airport hotel the next morning Daphne picks him up LAN Teague will holes up in the couple's mountain retreat nestled at the end of a long driveway hidden by tall pine trees his children have no idea daddy's home his wife Daphne did have family visit in that house in North Carolina at Christmastime and Thanksgiving and he would stay at a hotel because he'd move out so they didn't know he's alive but LAN Tigua apparently did see trouble coming remember that panic room we told you about it's a safe house a safe room it's what it was called it was something he had insisted on having built into the house the bunker in his basement was designed to withstand a nuclear attack it was equipped with 20 inch thick steel doors and something like that can come in handy when you're hiding which is interesting because this house was purchased on your honeymoon yeah and he said he wanted to do renovations he renovated the whole house yes so he was already planning apparently Jose then gets busy creating a new identity he applies for a North Carolina driver's license using a stolen ID but his next move to create a new life will be his last he makes a dreadful mistake he applies for the passport in the United States government on his passport application Jose uses the name of Ernest wills an African American postal worker but that was just the beginning of Jose's missteps Jose actually listed the address of that mountain house in North Carolina and Daphne as the emergency contact what turns out to be another dumb move he had the Department of State on him and they knew the passport was supposed to be delivered to a post office box in North Carolina though he changed his look for his passport picture going from gray hair to a brown toupee in a fake goatee it seems three mistakes was a charm what had happened is Antigua previously had the passport he submits a passport again both of them were handwritten same handwriting pictures come back and they match the faces because of the measurements between the nose and the eyes and the ears and so the hunt was on the feds run secret surveillance on LAN Tigua and after a year and a half they finally get their man he had been having work done on his Jeep and when we got to the place to pick up his Jeep these agents were already there and they got him and they handcuffed him and arrested him Hosea Antigua immediately confesses and confirms that he is Hosea Antigua he was wearing a toupee he had dyed his facial hair the couple is immediately separated for questioning one of the agents came over to me in this whole time that this has been going on he's always been telling me you know I have to be this person identity was supposedly the CIA had given him so when the agent came and said who is that I did what he had told me to do and I said that's my friend and I gave his name and the agent looked at me and he said I'm gonna ask you again I'm a federal agent you can't lie but I was so terrified and so thinking of protecting him and my family I lied again and that's when they arrested me the evidence is overwhelming remember his life insurance policy supposedly worth six million it turns out he forged it Jose really only had about $38,000 Jose and Daphne eventually both pleaded guilty he's convicted of conspiracy and bank fraud the judge sentenced him to 14 years in the pen I think it was well deserved he will be in his 70s when he gets out of prison he made a decision he made a bed he's gonna have to sleep in it and Daphne faced up to five years in jail for conspiracy she wound up serving 17 months but even while sitting in the slammer Jose still had her under his spell my family hired a lawyer to defend me and I sat with him for three hours and I told him everything and he kept telling me he said Daphne it's all a lie he were duped and I'm like no it's the truth and you'll see because the government's gonna expose it and tell the truth it's all the truth she was in there for months and believed heartily that her husband was telling the truth and she was waiting every day for the CIA to come and fix it all do you blame her for having gotten herself in this position you know looking from the outside in your you know how could she be so naive why would you let this happen you you should have seen the signs but being there and in the moment with him and how great of a con artist he was he would have fooled anybody even though she served her time Daphne remains under house arrest and must wear an ankle bracelet for three months so Jackie how far can you go outside just here good she can leave only to go to church and hopes to find a job so she can somehow pay back the eight hundred seventy-one thousand dollars josè collected in insurance money so now your mom is stuck with paying the restitution for both of them right which i think is very unfair because even before she met Jose my mom had a house she had home she had vehicles she had a career she had her life together Daphne is filing for divorce and refuses to answer the dozens of letters he has written to her from jail it's just junk it's just garbage in there so that's what I started returning them and just saying I don't want him for what to hear more lies I lied to his wife as he did that's nothing but cruel and barbaric because he turned her from being a person of good character to a person that's going to die as a felon the ghost of Jose LAN Tigua finally busted and as for Daphne the fairy tale is broken the glass slipper from her prince charming never fit the fairy tale it doesn't exist and remember how Daphne spoke to a doctor and he confirmed Jose's mad cow disease well it turns out he was a real doctor in fact Daphne says Jose had hoped to use him in his plan to fake his death but the doctor got spooked and pulled out at the last minute

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 1,342,350

Rating: 4.6600952 out of 5

Keywords: Jose Lantigua, Jacksonville Florida, Daphne Simpson, True Crime Daily, Crime Watch Daily

Id: Lt3d2rvrz1s

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019