Vietnam Veteran Nabs "Dead" Contractor

Lawsuit: Florida contractor fakes death to dodge angry homeowners
Tampa Bay Times
Mark Puente
Times Staff Writer
June 23, 2017

SEMINOLE — For weeks, Glenn Holland, 67, crawled out of bed before the sun rose to look for a dead man.

Glenn and Judith Holland at Morton Plant Hospital, where she is undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. Last year the couple said they paid a contractor thousands of dollars to renovate their future retirement home in Seminole. But when they tried to move in on Dec. 14, they said the home was in shambles and uninhabitable. They sent a text message to contractor Marc Anthony Perez at 12:36 p.m. looking for answers. Fourteen minutes later, they got back this text: "This is Marc's daughter, dad passed away on the 7th of December in a car accident. Sorry." Turns out Perez was still alive. Now the Hollands are suing him in Pinellas-Pasco circuit court. [LARA CERRI | Times]

The retiree and Vietnam veteran spent several weeks on stakeout in his Ford F-150. Under the cover of darkness, he waited outside the home of a man he was told had died in a car crash.

For weeks, neither the Corvette, Hummer or pick-up truck in the driveway moved.

Holland nearly gave up. He waited one last time. It was 4 a.m. on a Friday in March.

Four hours later, the deceased walked outside and jumped into the truck.

Adrenaline shot through Holland. His heart started pounding. His mind raced:

Could Marc Anthony Perez be alive?

He was. The contractor who Holland said ripped him off, then faked his own death to get out of paying him back for a botched renovation, who left Holland and his cancer-stricken wife with nowhere to live, was still among the living.
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