A Jacksonville restaurant is responding to the recent revelation of a scandal by its former owner.
The Department of Justice announced George Joshua Floyd pled guilty to defrauding the investors behind Josephine, an Italian restaurant in Avondale.
Although the DOJ just announced Floyd’s guilty plea, the team behind Josephine said they separated from him a year and a half ago.
“The vision was always to kind of create an Italian-American restaurant that is also a neighborhood restaurant,” said Josephine Operator James Cobb.
Cobb says that vision for the restaurant stayed steady since it opened in Avondale in 2022, regardless of what was going on behind the scenes.
“We have parted ways with the individual that has pleaded guilty to embezzlement and wire-fraud and we’ve had a chance to regrow the restaurant,” said Cobb.
That individual is 45-year-old George Joshua Floyd, who helped open Josephine.
The Department of Justice says Floyd stole about $1.4 million from investors by “withdrawing large amounts of cash, wiring money to his personal account, using a business credit card for personal expenses, and causing the restaurant to enter into unauthorized merchant cash advance loans.”
Cobb says the investors approached him in early 2025, hoping to keep the restaurant from folding.
“They believed in the restaurant,” said Cobb. “They believed in the sales, all the people we see, the guests we see day-to-day and how they’re experiencing the restaurant.”
Cobb’s first objective after taking over was to meet with the staff to explain what happened.
“There were a few people that decided it wasn’t the right fit and we let them move on, and then there was a large amount of the people that were still here who decided they wanted to stay and work as a team to get Josephine going in the right direction,” said Cobb.
Cobb says in the 18 months since he took over as operator, they’ve added pasta and cocktail classes to connect with customers, added a new chef de cuisine to help develop the cooks, event manager to add more special dining opportunities and implemented stronger financial controls and oversight.
“I feel like all those different parts of the business were things we needed to dial in and get right, and I feel like, now that we’ve done that, our guests have never been happier,” said Cobb.
Cobb said customers have had some questions since the embezzlement news broke, with many thinking the fraud happened recently and were worried about Josephine closing.
He keeps reassuring them that it happened a long time ago; he feels like they’ve already turned the corner and, in fact, had their best summer in two years in terms of sales.
Dining and Cooking