A man who repeatedly appeared on a Florida sheriff’s “Wheel of Fugitive” social media game show is taking legal action against the law enforcement official for wrongly including the man on the list.

David Gay is seeking more than $50,000 in his defamation lawsuit against Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, who Gay claims made him lose a job and cause emotional distress when the sheriff featured him on four episodes of the weekly game show from January to February 2021, according to USA Today.

The lawsuit, which was filed in state court last week, said  Gay was fired while going to his new job.

“As he drove to his first day of work, his new employer informed him by phone to not bother showing up, as he had seen Mr. Gay in Ivey and/or [Brevard County Sheriff’s Office] ‘Wheel of Fugitive’ videos,” Brevard attorney Jessica Travis wrote in the complaint.

Gay argues that he wasn’t a fugitive during the airings, since he was either sitting in jail for a probation violation or had already been legally released.

One of the infractions came when Gay turned himself in for violating his probation that stemmed from a 2018 felony battery charge. Adjudication was withheld in the case — a special sentence in which the judge orders probation but does not formally convict the defendant of a criminal offense. 

He was charged again for violating his probation in December 2020 for a misdemeanor domestic battery offense, but the case was later dismissed. 

In “Wheel of Fugitive,” which mimics the popular game show “Wheel of Fortune,” Sheriff Ivey spins a wheel that has 10 photos of Brevard County’s most wanted people who have warrants out for their arrest.

The “winner” of the show has the details of their arrest warrant read aloud.

“Everybody watches it,” Sheriff Ivey told the Associated Press. “Even the fugitives watch it” to see who becomes “fugitive of the week.”

The sheriff then urges the fugitives to “do the right thing” and turn themselves in.

A 2021 investigation by the Florida Today newspaper found that 60 of the people featured on “Wheel of Fugitive” were either in jail, were already freed or had no active arrest warrant at the time the episode aired.

A disclaimer at the bottom of each episode says, “The suspects may have since been arrested or their alleged charges otherwise resolved or dismissed.”

• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.