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Lakewood, NJ - The Yeshivishe community of Lakewood, NJ is all astir at the biggest exposé to hit the bastion of Torah Judaism in years.

After initially duping a number of reputable organizations, leaders, rabbis and volunteers, a non-Jewish individual who in recent court proceedings has stated his name as Ted Riley Floyd continued a years-long charade of posing as a Jewish baal teshuvah of Marrano ancestry. In the process, he deftly fooled an entire community to whom he was, for all they knew, a returning Jew deserving of their loving embrace.

"They took care of him panim v'achor," says his former Partners in Torah  study partner, who was taken in by Mr. Floyd's convincing act for over six years, he told VIN News. The partner asked to remain anonymous.

Floyd succeeded in his subterfuge partially by assuming the identity of a deceased individual, introducing himself as Nathaniel James Levi—and later as Natan Yosef Levi—to Partners in Torah when in December of 2002 he first contacted the organization and filled out an application. He was living in Wichita, Kansas at the time. Not suspecting anything untoward, the organization shortly provided "Levi" with a partner; the two progressed fairly quickly.

In the summer of 2003, Floyd met his partner for the first time when the latter took him on a personal guided tour of Lakewood, where the ostensibly "newly-frum baal teshuvah" declared his love for the community and his interest in relocating from Kansas. Keeping up his assumed role, he said there was difficulty obtaining kosher food in Wichita, and expressed unhappiness with the local "Conservadox" synagogue.

As for any conversion concerns raised by his purported Marrano ancestry, Floyd claimed to be an "authentic" Marrano, therefore required no giyur misafek.

Floyd moved to Lakewood, first dwelling in a rented basement and later purchasing a home in the town's Forest Park section. According to his Partners in Torah friend, Floyd claimed to have sold his Wichita home.

Once living in Lakewood with his wife and children, who were accepted into local chedarim, he quickly became known as Natan (or Netan, as he spelled it on his MySpace.com page), a progressively-literate baal teshuvah whose growing knowledge in Torah continually impressed his long-time Partners in Torah volunteer, whom he regaled with claims of constant learning at Beth Medrash Govoha, a claim that seems to have been largely true. Floyd perfected the role of a Torah-observant Jew so well that he was even in the process of penning a sefer on hilchos kesivas sefer Torah.

In like manner did Floyd regularly attend minyanim at his local shul, integrating into the community well enough to start his own graphic design business, LevyDesign.org. Among other things, the company created LimudNet.org, an online resource of mussar shiurim by Rabbi Ezra Zafrani, a leader of Lakewood's Sephardic contingent, to whom Floyd had become close.

All along, his PIT chavrusa would occasionally call to learn that he and his wife were doing well. "He came to us for Chol HaMoed Sukkos," the chavrusa tells VIN. "I couldn't say, 'I knew something was wrong from the beginning.' He was different, but in the same way baalei teshuvos are different. It wasn't anything unusual."

"Levi" apparently was even featured in an article on Partners in Torah that ran in the Mishpacha magazine in 2006.

All that came to a shocking end on Monday, March 24, 2008, when Floyd and his family were exposed.

VIN has received confirmation from the U.S. Marshal's Service that the FBI was not involved in Mr. Floyd's sudden disappearance from Lakewood, as erroneously reported elsewhere; neither was he arrested by the FBI.

The facts are these: after departing Lakewood some time early in the week, Mr. Floyd personally appeared for his own volition on Monday, March 24 in the United States District Court of the Kansas District for a detention hearing, after having been previously released on bond by the Court's District of New Jersey. But after the U.S. government attorney presented evidence of "serious risk" of flight, including the facts that the New Jersey bond was placed under the false name of Levi, Floyd's Lakewood home had been acquired through some fraudulent mortgage loan, and the existence of two outstanding warrants in two Kansas counties, Floyd was denied release and is currently being detained by the federal government.

According to court sources, the case against Floyd was filed in February of 2008, with charged of submitting a fraudulent passport application in Kansas. His passport was scrutinized, resulting in evidence that he was not who he claimed to be, leading to an investigation by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service. Apparently, Mr. Floyd was contacted by the government without fanfare or arrest, prompting him to face his past—and to flee Lakewood.

What this man's goal was in integrating so smoothly into the Lakewood Torah community still remains a mystery of the sketchiest nature. But as this story unfolds, VIN News will keep its readers posted.

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