As charges against Joel Greenberg grow, scope of federal probe still unclear | Exclusive

As former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg stood in a federal courtroom in Orlando last month while a grand jury indictment against him was unsealed, U.S. Secret Service agents arrived at the office he kept on the second floor of a former bank building in Lake Mary.

It’s unclear what the agents were looking for, but it’s a signal that the investigation into Greenberg reaches beyond the charges he now faces: stalking and stealing the identity of a political opponent and, in a second indictment filed this week, four counts of using his office to create fake driver licenses for himself.

Greenberg was elected in 2016 as a newcomer to Seminole County’s political scene, and his term was quickly marred by controversies — from anti-Muslim social media posts to lucrative contracts given to close friends and using his office to set up a blockchain business.

A federal investigation began as early as April 2019 — six months before the crimes Greenberg is now charged with are even alleged to have occurred, a lawyer for Greenberg confirmed last month.

The mystery deepened last week when the name of Greenberg’s alleged stalking victim and political opponent, Brian Beute, turned up in a report released by Graphika, one of the nation’s premier social media monitoring and disinformation tracking companies. The report detailed how Roger Stone, self-described “dirty trickster” and longtime ally of President Donald Trump, engaged a network on Facebook that harassed political opponents and critics.

One of the “assets” identified by Facebook and Graphika as working on behalf of Stone shared content on social media about Beute similar to the smears Greenberg is accused of spreading.

The nature of Greenberg’s relationship with that “asset,” a far-right blogger based in Orlando, is unclear. It’s also unknown if Greenberg had any relationship with Stone, whose prison sentence was commuted last week by Trump, beyond an old selfie posted to Twitter on July 8, 2017. Greenberg, arm outstretched, captured the image of himself next to Stone and U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach.

“Great catching up with @mattgaetz and @RogerJStoneJr,” he wrote.

Brian Beiber, a white-collar defense attorney with GrayRobinson who is representing the tax collector’s office, referred questions about the ongoing federal investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, but confirmed the Secret Service agents’ visit to Greenberg’s Lake Mary office.

“They came to the office, and we collectively cooperated,” Bieber said.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Maria Chapa Lopez declined to answer questions about the recent visit to Greenberg’s office or the nature of the investigation.

Vince Citro, Greenberg’s personal white collar defense attorney, also declined to comment. He has previously said the government will be unable to prove the charges against Greenberg, who has pleaded not guilty. Court documents filed this week indicated that Citro and partner Mark Horwitz had tried to arrange a meeting with investigators for months before the first indictment was unsealed but were rebuffed.

Connection to Stone network?

The first indictment alleges that Greenberg, who resigned from office the day after he was arrested and dropped his bid for re-election this November, posed as a “concerned student” to send letters to the school where Beute works as a teacher falsely accusing him of sexual misconduct with a student. Greenberg also created fake social media accounts to pose as Beute or others to try to discredit him, authorities allege.

Beute, a Republican candidate for tax collector, teaches at a private school and is the founder of an environmental group to save rural land in Seminole County. Through his attorney, he declined to comment about the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg said in court that investigators found Greenberg’s fingerprints and DNA on the letters and traced the fake social media accounts to his computer’s IP address.

If convicted, Greenberg could face up to a decade in prison.

Three days before Greenberg’s arrest, the Facebook page for the far-right blog Central Florida Post, identified as part of the Stone network, shared a video partially titled “Creepy Brian Beute strikes again.” The video, which has since been removed by Facebook along with the entire Central Florida Post page, was shared by an account with the username “April Goad.”

According to Graphika, “April Goad” was one in a network of fake accounts that boosted Central Florida Post and other pro-Stone content on Facebook.

The report by Graphika, titled “Facebook’s Roger Stone Takedown: Facebook Removes Inauthentic Network Related to Political Operative,” identified Central Florida Post creator Jacob Engels as an “associate” of Stone’s who used the Facebook page to defend the hate group Proud Boys and to promote Stone.

Engels declined to answer questions about why his Central Florida Post Facebook page posted a video attacking Beute, Greenberg’s political opponent.

He also did not answer questions about how he knows Greenberg and referred a reporter to his attorney, Thomas Sommerville, a criminal defense lawyer.

“I really don’t feel like I want to comment,” Engels said.

Sommerville also declined to comment.

Engels has posted pro-Greenberg content over the years, including a post on June 2, two weeks before he was first indicted by a federal grand jury, that highlighted Greenberg’s accomplishments.

“One of the youngest constitutional officers in the United States, Greenberg’s time as Tax Collector has been marked with sweeping reforms and the end of a culture of corruption ...,” Engels wrote.

On May 1, 2019, Engels posted a photo of Greenberg’s headshot next to puppies and wrote, “Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg is doing his part to help place some really cute doggies in their forever homes this weekend.”

Another headline from Engels dated April 3, 2017, read, “Greenberg Ends Crooked Profiteering In Seminole County Tax Office.”

And, in 2016, Engels filed a police report alleging that Valdes, Greenberg’s opponent at the time, assaulted Engels as he tried to ask him questions at an event. But State Attorney Phil Archer did not file charges against Valdes and noted it was clear from videos of the incident and interviews with those involved that “Mr. Engels was seeking a confrontation with Mr. Valdes in order to obtain a negative reaction which could be recorded.”

Greenberg’s rise and fall

Greenberg grew up in west Seminole County and his father, Andrew Greenberg, started Greenberg Dental in the 1980s, which now has 92 offices across Florida. Joel Greenberg was just 31 years old when he unseated Valdes, the longtime tax collector and Republican favorite, in the party primary in August 2016. Greenberg then defeated a write-in candidate in the November general election.

Greenberg used his own money from his family’s dental fortune to rail against Valdes, claiming that the Tax Collector’s office used antiquated technologies, wait times were too long and that Valdes was profiting by successfully bidding for years on tax delinquent properties put up in public auctions.

According to state financial disclosure forms, Greenberg listed his worth at the end of 2019 at nearly $5.9 million. That includes $5.5 million worth of stock in his family’s business AWG Inc., $85,500 in jewelry and $276,000 cash in bank accounts. As tax collector, he earned about $140,000 annually. He also drew nearly $400,000 in income from his family’s business in 2019, according to the report.

Among many controversies while Greenberg was in office was a Blockchain business he set up within his public county office, an incident in which he used his tax collector’s badge to pull over a woman for speeding, and an attempt to issue pistols to his employees to form his own security force.

Greenberg also delved into other ventures that drew the attention of local officials, who questioned his spending. He came up with an idea to sell off the tax collector’s branch offices and invest the money in old shopping centers, a plan that was halted by the state’s Department of Revenue.

Greenberg doled out $1.9 million in contracts to friends, former business partners, campaign associates or others, including a half dozen people who either served as groomsmen in his 2016 wedding or attended the event, the Sentinel reported last year.

He also paid three attorneys at the same time — Frank Kruppenbacher, the former Orlando International Airport chairman who resigned from the Florida Virtual School as an investigation started into his behavior there; Winter Park lawyer Wade Vose; and Richard Sierra, who was once married to Greenberg’s aunt. The legal bills totaled more than $687,000 over two years.

And, in 2017, Greenberg hired lobbying firm Ballard Partners at a cost of $6,250 a month “to change laws that are out of date or just stupid,” he said at the time.

Seminole County developer and Ballard partner Chris Dorworth is a friend of Greenberg’s. The two spent time last year, along with Gaetz, at the White House visiting Trump. The three posed together on the White House lawn for a selfie Greenberg posted to Twitter on June 22, 2019.

Before Beute was Greenberg’s opponent, he was Dorworth’s, as one of the founders and first president of the nonprofit group Save Rural Seminole that was formed in 2018 to oppose the controversial River Cross project developed by Dorworth, a former state legislator, and to advocate for protecting the county’s voter-established Rural Boundary.

The county commission unanimously voted down the development in August 2018. Dorworth in June contributed $1,000 to Greenberg’s re-election campaign, according to campaign records. Gaetz also contributed $1,000.

Earlier investigations, but no charges

Documents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show Greenberg caught the eye of state agents as early as August 2017, just eight months after he first took office.

But state authorities never charged him with a crime, noting in a 2018 report that allegations from an employee that Greenberg asked him to hack into Seminole government computers couldn’t be “independently substantiated or developed at this time.”

The report, dated June 8, 2018, said other matters related to the “mismanagement” of the tax collector’s budget or property purchases would be subject to review by the Florida Department of Revenue or the Seminole County Commission.

State agents also looked into the purchase by the Tax Collector’s Office of a former bank building in Winter Springs. In that deal, coordinated by Greenberg’s associates, the Tax Collector’s Office paid $810,000 in cash for a vacant building from an Orlando company that had bought it earlier that same day in May 2017 for $680,000. That company, Shooters Orlando, was set up in August 2016, a day before Greenberg won the county’s Republican primary election and then dissolved about a year later.

A trial date for the federal stalking case against Greenberg will likely be set after Sept. 30, according to court records.

mcomas@orlandosentinel.com

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