Speaker 1: Top clue.
Speaker 2: It's top.
Speaker 1: Gear fortune Yo to the great, enjoy the album. I
wrote this with the hood and my enemies. Of course
I'm slack, okay. I give my Martians like that's Dr
mart Inside, jump on the beat. TH's not rid like
go porschoues. Hold on like horses for rod beets, like
engines up rob that ship up fencing. I did the spinding,
the spin like for spind time. Make that fish this
seasis two, the one finished sad bitches like my name
was Tracy. No, I do not save her her loves
no album. Oh Marba, be at your throwing tenstdangrumps like
y m c MB top for the food chain. Shee
ease your fortunes into you.
Speaker 2: That's my name, y'all.
Speaker 3: Shirley Strawberry is finally speaking up after that chaotic drama
involving her husband, Ernest Williams, and it is not looking
good for her. Shirley came under fire a while ago
when we found out that not only had Ernest been
scamming people, but he also got exposed for having a
whole side chick on Shirley. It got even messier because
it turned out that he had also been lying to
Shirley and scamming her as well. That was an entire
crap show and it almost ruined Shirley's life. Well, it
has been a little over a year since all that
went down, and unfortunately, it doesn't look like Shirley has
been able to recover from that situation. So what happened
to Ernest and is Shirley still sticking by her man
through all this? Let's get into it. Shirley and her husband,
Ernest Williams had been married for a few years and
for a while it seemed like everything was going smoothly,
but behind the scenes, things were far from perfect. In fact,
their relationship wasn't just rocky, it was straight up toxic,
and when the drama first popped off, folks couldn't help
but question whether Shirley really knew what she was signing
up or when she said yes to Ernest. Honestly, their
relationship had always seemed a little from the beginning, it
felt like she didn't know him all that well. I mean,
when he proposed to her live on air during her
radio show with Steve Harvey, she didn't even recognize his voice.
That should have been the first red flag. The woman
that you're about to ask me this question about do
you love him? Okay, then surely.
Speaker 4: Yes, dish your man right here. It's a mess. Though,
Wait a.
Speaker 3: Minute, there were already conversations floating around about Shirley rushing
into the marriage just for the sake of being married,
and honestly, it's starting to look like folks were onto something.
Turns out there was a lot she didn't know about
Ernest before he got with her. He had a wild
pass and more than a few run ins with the law.
His criminal history goes all the way back to the eighties,
so he'd been dealing with legal trouble for decades, and
just when you think he might have changed, he picked
up a couple of felonies in the early two thousands,
so clearly that lifestyle wasn't behind him. It's not totally
clear how he and Steve Harvey even became friends, but
at some point they did, and Steve thought it'd be
a good idea to play matchmaker and connect him with Shirley. Now,
even if Shirley didn't know the full extent of who
Ernest really was, she did know about his past run
ins with the law, but she chose to believe in him.
She truly thought he had left all that behind and
was ready to turn over a new lead. And for
a while, it actually looked like he had. He stayed
out of trouble and opened a high end barbershop in Atlanta.
It was not your average corner spot, but one that
catered strictly to the rich and famous. On top of that,
he launched a company that provided unarmed security for clients.
So yeah, from the outside looking in, he seemed like
a man who had toned things around. The money was
flowing in, his businesses looked legit and no one had
any reason to question the thing, and Shirley and Ernest
were really living the life. But all that changed in
twenty twenty two when Ernest was arrested on fraud charges
and was exposed for running a million dollar scam team
along with a woman named Erica King. According to new sources,
fifty seven year old Ernest Williams and forty six year
old Erica King convinced people to pay them for their
business expertise. They would align themselves with their victims with
promises to be able to grow their brands, their missions,
their life goals, their social media followings. Turns out that
Ernest was still the same man, but he had gotten
smart with time and tried to cover his tracks with
his side businesses. The wildest part about Ernest getting exposed
is that he probably would have gotten away with everything
if he hadn't gotten sloppy. The only reason he got
caught in the first place was because he ended up
under investigation for rental fraud, and that's what made the
authorities start digging into him. He and Erica had rented
a house literally right next door to the one he
shared with Shirley, but after a few months they just
stopped paying rent all together. Four months went by, and
of course the landlord had had enough and reported them.
That kicked off the rental fraud investigators. And if you're
wondering why Ernest would even need a house next door
to his own, the answer is messy. He was sneaking
around with Erica ruma Is. She was his side chick,
and he was bold enough to keep her that close,
hiding her in plain sight. A scammer and a cheater,
this man couldn't even pick a struggle any who. Once
the police started looking into Ernest and Erica over the
whole rental fraud situation, They decided to take a closer
look at their finances, and that's when things really started
to unravel. The numbers weren't adding up a all, so
investigators kept digging, and that's when they uncovered the real mess.
The two of them had scammed over a dozen people
out of nearly one million dollars.
Speaker 2: Police say their investigation first started at this home on
Pinegrove Road months ago. Investigators say after Williams and King
hadn't paid rent for a while, detectives started looking into
their financial transactions and it led them to their extensive scheme.
Speaker 3: Oh it's still unclear whether Shirley knew what Ernest was
up to with his scammy little business, but she made
a move that made people suspicious. Just a couple of
weeks before he got caught, she suddenly took his name
off the d to her house in California. That way,
if he ended up getting arrested and the authorities came
after his assets, her house would be protected. Now, whether
she did that because she had a feeling something was
about to go down or simply because she didn't fully
trust him, nobody knows for sure, but either way, it
ended up being a smart move on her part, Unus
got booked on five counts of conspiracy to commit a felony.
He had two of the charges dismissed and his bond
was set for fifteen thousand dollars. But that's not all,
because he was also booked on three a day charges
of theft by taking operation of credit repair services and
theft by deception. But his scamming activities went beyond scamming
people into paying for his services alone, because he would
also go to businesses make purchases and not hay Now,
according to court documents, he was charged deception and with
intent to avoid payment knowingly obtained car repair services of
a value of more than one thousand, five hundred dollars
but less than five thousand dollars, which were available only
for compensation for which the accused failed to pay. But
if you thought things were messy up to this point,
buckle up, because it only gets darker from here. You
already know how the police operate. Once they uncover one thing,
they don't stop digging, and that's exactly what happened with Ernest.
After they found out about his scamming, they launched a
full blown investigation and started digging deep, and what they
uncovered wasn't just shady, it was downright disturbing. The more
they looked into him, the uglier it got. What investigators
found next was beyond disturbing. Ernest was caught with highly
inappropriate and explicit material involving children, if you catch my drift.
But as horrifying as that was, it didn't stop there.
He was also accused of essaying at least eleven miners,
and a court has since ordered him to stay far
away from all of his alleged victums, their families, and
anyone connected to them. And just when you think it
couldn't possibly get any worse, it does. Among the victims
was Shirley's own daughter, her only child, but the nightmare
didn't stop there. Ernest also reportedly essayed the daughter's to
young children. And it's even creepier because he has also
been ordered to stay away from any and all animals,
and this kind of suggests that either he was being
stiff to animals or he was doing some improper things
with the animals, which is just creepy. But then, as
some fans have pointed out, being cruel to animals is
unlikely to get him a lifetime ban from animals, so
you can imagine what he did, because I ain't gonna
spell it out now. You think that Ernest saying her
daughter and granddaughters would be more than enough reason for
Shirley to dump him, right, well wrong, because at the
time she was determined to stick by her man. In fact,
not only did she stick with him, but she also
begged the courts to release him to come home to her.
According to court documents, Shirley said, I have been told
that in one or more of the cases pending before
or the court, I have been identified as either a
victim of his or witness to a purported criminal act
of his, to which I respond that I am neither.
It is my intention that the court know that I
wish for him to be released with no conditions as
regards me, that I wish for him to be able
to reside with me or wherever he elects to reside,
and that his release be effectuated immediately. But it gets
even worse because, according to one of the prosecutors on
the case, he heard Shirley begging Ernest to let her
help him escape to Dubai and he can stay in
Steve Harvey's house.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor overheard surely telling him, you could go to
Steve's place in Dubai where his son's Witton lives in
a lay low.
Speaker 4: And I'm almost sure that she just didn't invite her
husband to go over there without Steve's permissions.
Speaker 3: So it looks like not only was she defending him,
but she was trying to help him run away. For contexts,
Dubai doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US, so
if Ernest had gone away, he would have gotten away
with his crimes. Fans d surely for filth and called
her out for being a bird, but after a while,
she eventually came out to reveal that she was divorcing Ernest.
She also claimed that the letter she wrote to the
judge was actually from before she knew the full scope
of what Ernest had done. At the time, it was
only a fraud case and that's why she was standing
by him and asking for his release. She truly believed
it was just about his scammy behavior. But once the
truth came out and she learned about the disturbing accusations
involving her daughter, grandkids, and animals, everything changed. She wasted
no time and claimed that she was going to divorce him.
Speaker 4: Steve, I'm gonna just start by saying that my estranged
husband is in jail. He's been in jail for over
a year since about the right after the fourth of
July of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: For obvious reasons. Fans didn't buy her claims, and it
sounded like she was only fronting to save face because
she was getting dragged for bilth. Well, the case died
down after that and we all moved on from that. Well,
she finally came out a couple of days ago to
an update, and unfortunately things aren't as good as we'd hope.
On the bright side, she did divorce Ernest and the
divorce was finalized last year. However, things got really bad
for her and she struggled financially, even though Steve kept
her on as a co host of the Steve Harvey
Morning Show. According to multiple reports, the radio personality is
said to be struggling financially due to her incarcerated estranged husband,
ERNESTO Williams, legal issues, fraudulent activities, and debts that she's
paying off. Surely became homeless in twenty twenty two until
she was taken in by friends. According to the report,
it looks like she's slowly starting to recover financially and emotionally,
but she still has a long way to go. It's
hard to watch her struggle over this, but hey, at
least she seems to be on the up and up
and the only way left to go is up. But y'all,
let me know what you think, then check out this
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