TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — It was March 2021 when emails and phone calls started pouring into Better Call Behnken about abandoned Olympus Pools projects.

Last week, a jury found company owner James Staten guilty of 35 felonies after prosecutors argued he intentionally spent customers’ money on a lavish lifestyle.

Toni Rosier, known as count number 27, said she told jurors how Staten left abandoned her pool and hurt her family.

“I had to go into my 401k, which made me behind on her college fund,” she said. “We are still impacted and trying to recover from this.”

The defense argued Staten was merely a bad businessman, but Rosier recalls Staten asking for more money after her pool was already abandoned.

“That’s not bad business,” Rosier said. “You know you had already taken $25,000 from us. You showed up again to get another $15,000, and you had only done $25,000 worth of work, and you know I had lien on my house. That’s not bad business; that’s a crook.”

In spring 2021, our Better Call Behnken investigation got the attention of authorities who then started investigations of their own.

“We had reached out to different municipalities,” Rosier said. “The state, the governor, nobody was listening until you jumped in and it really did take it to the next level.”

Jody Krebs of Riverview was one of the first to call.

“You went after it, and you stayed with it,” Krebs said. “Had you not done that, we absolutely do not believe we’d be where were are right now.”