Ford seemed to relish his legislative immunity and has been a frequent sight along Interstate 40 between Memphis and Nashville, often driving at speeds well in excess of 100 miles per hour (160 km/h). This practice caused him some difficulty in 1990, when he was accused of shooting at a truck driver while driving at this speed; an all-white jury in rural West Tennessee eventually acquitted him of any wrongdoing in this matter. Later in the 1990s he was accused of pulling a gun on a work crew of the MLG&W utility; for this he eventually accepted a plea bargain resulting in 250 hours community service time.
Rumor and innuendo long continued to swirl about Ford. In early 2005 it was revealed that a bill which he sponsored changing the way in which child support payments were figured was of great benefit to him personally, due to the complex nature of his personal life. He shared his life with both a former wife and a mistress expecting children by him simultaneously (one had previously been charged with assaulting the other), alternating his time between two separate residences (neither of which was located in the district he represents, although the funeral home, which is his legal residence, is). The existence of yet another child from a previous extramarital relationship with a third woman was revealed as well. In another circumstance touted by detractors as an ethical violation, Ford had also co-sponsored a bill preventing furniture dealers and others who were not licensed funeral directors from selling caskets, which his critics pointed to as an obvious conflict of interest, since Ford and other funeral directors would be the sole beneficiaries of such legislation, and any benefit to the consuming public deriving from such a bill was difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate. In April 2005 the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance found Ford to be guilty of having used campaign funds to pay for a daughter's rather elaborate wedding reception; the amount of the fine, $10,000, was considerably larger than the amount of fines typically levied by the body, but critics pointed out that it was still considerably less than the amount of campaign funds spent on the reception ($15,000+). Ford's defense was that a large number of the people invited to the reception, at least 100, were constituents and hence the event was held at least in part to aid his relationships with them.
Hearings were also held in 2005 about whether Ford's apparent failure to disclose considerable sums of consultancy fees paid him by some insurance concerns involved with TennCare constituted an ethical violation. Ford stated that such a failure was inadvertent and that the fees were for helping the companies get contracts similar to those with TennCare in other states and were not bribery for his assistance in getting them the Tennessee contracts.
On May 26, 2005, one day after his nephew announced his candidacy for the United States Senate, Ford was arrested by the FBI, along with two other Tennessee state senators, a Tennessee state representative, a former state senator, a Chattanooga school board member, and an African American political activist, for alleged participation in a bribery scheme utilizing a "sting" operation involving a bogus electronics recycling company lobbying for favorable treatment under state law. The other politicians were released on bond; Ford, who purportedly was heard on tape saying words to the effect of, "If you're working for the FBI, I'll shoot you," to one of the agents involved in the sting, was held overnight at the Federal Detention Facility in Mason, Tennessee, about 30 miles northwest of Memphis. As a condition of the bail he was allowed to make the next day, he was required to surrender his passport, not carry a firearm, and not leave West Tennessee (technically, not to leave the federal court's Western District of Tennessee, coextensive with West Tennessee except that it also includes Perry County in Middle Tennessee as well). He was also ordered to appear again in court on May 31, which he did; at this hearing the government's request to revoke or increase his bail was denied but the terms of his house arrest were continued unmodified. This was later softened somewhat so as not to interfere with his operation of the funeral home business.
Ford's sister Ophelia won both the Democratic nomination to succeed him in the state senate and the special general election for that seat by very narrow margins. During the investigation into this election, it was revealed that several ballots were cast by ineligible persons, including convicted felons and several deceased persons, and that the election official supposedly having attested to the validity of many of these ballots was in fact on the day of the election in New York City, her name having been forged by a relative standing in for her at the polls. The state senate, now controlled by Republicans, voted to remove Ophelia Ford from office based upon these allegations, but she obtained a Federal District court injunction preventing this action from taking place to date.
Recently, the Tennessee Department of Commerce has sought to revoke Ford's license to issue property and casualty insurance in the state, stating that his conduct ". . . at a minimum, demonstrated untrustworthiness or financial irresponsibility."
