Michael Hudak WSVN reporter suspended (without pay) and removed from company masthead after caught stealing neighbor’s $16K Rolex watch & pawning it.
A rising reporter based in South Florida has ruined his career and now faces jail time time for allegedly stealing his neighbor’s $16,000 Rolex watch and then pawning the item.
Michael Hudak, 29, originally of NY and working for WSVN-ABC is accused of using a spare key his neighbor gave him in the event of an emergency only to enter the home while the neighbor was traveling abroad in July to steal the man’s Rolex watch, worth $16K according to court records.
The reporter went on to pawn the luxury watch using his Florida ID, police said.
WSVN reporter initially denied stealing $16K Rolex watch until data base linked his identity to pawned item
When the neighbor returned home, he found the Rolex watch missing, while noticing there were no signs the home had been broken in to.
The man told police that he asked all of his neighbors, including Hudak, if they knew anything about the watch, and they all responded that they did not, according to the arrest report. On Aug. 9, a detective received an email from an online database that tracks stolen goods that the watch’s serial number matched one that had been sold to the pawn shop, the report states.
After an investigation revealed that Hudak had pawned the watch, the reporter turned himself in to police on Thursday, WPLG reported.
Hudak faces charges of grand theft, burglary of an unoccupied dwelling and dealing in stolen property along with using a false verification at a pawn shop jail records show.
His bond has been set at $18,000 and he remains in custody, jail records show.
The incident led to WSVN releasing a statement saying that Hudak ‘has been suspended without pay’.
The disgraced reporter joined the network November 2023 after working as an anchor and reporter for WINK in Fort Myers, according to his now-deleted staff biography.
At WINK, he won on Emmy for his coverage of a tornado that hit the city in January 2022.
That same year, he received an Emmy nomination for his investigative reporting that led to the shutdown of a Covid-19 testing company accused of administering fraudulent Covid tests to the public.
In 2021, he received another Emmy nomination for his coverage of the catastrophic collapse of a 12-story condo building in Surfside, the dailymail reported.
Hudak’s bio states that he is originally from New York and that he worked as an anchor and reporter at a station in Tallahassee after graduating from Florida State University.
He faces a a maximum of five years in prison for the grand-theft charge.
As of Friday morning, Hudak remained held at the Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
