Craig Stevens, a 34-year-old man indicted on federal fraud and identity theft charges in February 2025, is accused of accosting a 15-year-old boy in the showers at Planet Fitness on State Road 100 in Palm Coast last February, after he had pleaded guilty to two federal charges and was awaiting his sentence.
Stevens had been the personal care assistant of a resident at an assisted living facility. Between December 2019 and February 2020, he and two co-conspirators, Jataiya Johnson and Aaron Harden, defrauded the man of tens of thousands of dollars. Stevens defrauded him of $19,762.
He was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2025, pleaded guilty to two counts last October–Conspiracy to Commit Access Device Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft, and on March 3 was sentenced to 54 months in prison (four and a half years) in Coleman, Fla., followed by two years on probation.
The Planet Fitness incident took place last February 25. Stevens is alleged to have entered Planet Fitness at 6:59 a.m. on Feb. 25, using his mother’s membership card. She had given him permission to use it, she later told deputies. Planet Fitness allows members to bring a guest. But the cards themselves are strictly personal, and may not be transferred or used by other people.
Surveillance footage shows a man matching Stevens’s description entering the locker room immediately after he entered Planet Fitness, and leaving the locker room at 7:26 a.m., when he walked directly to the exit. He was out of the building at 7:27 a.m.
A 15-year-old boy walked out of the locker room at that time and spoke to Planet Fitness personnel. He told them that when he had walked into the locker room, he’d seen Stevens naked in a shower stall. Shower stalls are equipped with curtains. Stevens had opted to leave the curtain open.
The 15-year-old thought that was odd, but went into a shower stall of his own and closed the curtain. He felt uncomfortable disrobing entirely, so he kept on minimal clothing as he showered. As he did so, the man believed to be Stevens, still naked, allegedly pulled the boy’s stall’s curtain aside.
“No!,” the boy said.
“I thought you said I join you?” the man told him, after he had appeared to be walking away.
The boy repeated “No” and denied saying any such thing. The man got dressed and left the room.
The same day, the boy provided a sworn statement about the incident to the school resource deputy at his school. On March 10, he identified Stevens in a photo lineup at his home, and did so immediately and “with absolute confidence,” according to Stevens’s arrest report.
While investigating his location, a sheriff’s deputy discovered that Stevens was in custody at the Seminole County jail, awaiting transfer to a federal prison. He had been at the jail a week before the Palm Coast incident, but was released pending sentencing. Detectives visited him on March 19.
After initially denying that he had had anything to do with the incident, Stevens acknowledged having been to Planet Fitness and using his mother’s card. But he denied interacting with anyone in the locker room. “There was nobody in there,” he told the detectives, even though surveillance footage shows two individuals were in the locker room during the same time frame.
At one point in the interview Stevens asked for the race of the alleged victim. Black, the detectives told him. Stevens, who is himself Black, laughed and said he would never do that to a Black man, saying it would lead to a fight. “I don’t need anything else,” he told the detectives, referring to criminal charges, an allusion to his federal conviction, “especially no sexual stories that’s not even my MO. Now if you said I stole somebody’s identity or wallet at the gym then it’s like fuck it, I probably did that.”
A detective asked him why would someone would make up the story about him? “He was unable to think of any reason this story would be false,” the arrest report states.
But there was no admission, which may place the State Attorney’s Office in a difficult position: there is no hard evidence, other than what one person said, to make the case. Detectives charged him with one count of lewd or lascivious exhibition involving an offender 18 years of age or older and a victim younger than 16, a second-degree felony with a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison. He has previous felony convictions for burglary and possession of stolen goods.
Skibum says
This man is a predator. People are always suggesting that FL courts are too lenient and releasing those who are awaiting trial or convicted of serious crimes when they should have been in jail where they could not continue to prey on innocent people. Well, this predator was released by our federal court system, awaiting sentence after being convicted. With the crimes he was convicted of and his criminal history, does anyone think he is the type of individual who should have been allowed out of jail pending sentencing on multiple felonies? I sure don’t!
DeTylenol Washington says
Why are you capitalizing “black”? It makes it confusing, as if it was someone’s surname.