Joel Greenberg was sentenced Thursday aft being convicted of aggregate felonies, including enactment trafficking and fraud. | Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP
The disgraced erstwhile Florida taxation collector who cooperated with national authorities successful their probe into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was sentenced Thursday to 11 years down bars.
Joel Greenberg’s sentencing was delayed aggregate times arsenic helium cooperated with authorities and national authorities.
The sentencing brings to a adjacent 1 of Seminole County’s astir sprawling nationalist corruption cases, which spurred inquiries into Gaetz and different nationalist figures, including Halsey Beshears, a erstwhile authorities House subordinate who besides served arsenic the caput of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Beshears resigned from his authorities station successful 2021, citing wellness issues. Greenberg, Gaetz and Beshears were named connected a December 2020 federal expansive assemblage subpoena.
Authorities person accused Greenberg, an elected taxation collector successful Central Florida, of fiscal crimes, stalking, individuality theft, enactment trafficking a insignificant and different offenses.
Greenberg was initially charged with much than 30 transgression counts, but successful May 2021 pleaded blameworthy to six charges — including enactment trafficking and fraud — successful speech for his practice successful aggregate cases, including a enactment trafficking probe into Gaetz. The 2 men were erstwhile friends, and Gaetz described Greenberg arsenic his “wingman” to acquaintances.
The Justice Department’s probe into Gaetz, which started successful 2020 during the closing months of the Trump administration, was looking into whether the Florida congressman had enactment with a 17-year-old pistillate and paid her for it. Gaetz, 1 of erstwhile President Donald Trump’s astir vocal supporters, had repeatedly denied the accusations and was ne'er charged with a crime.
In September, a idiosyncratic with cognition of the probe indicated that the DOJ would apt not prosecute charges against Gaetz.
Greenberg helped prosecutors unafraid convictions successful respective different cases, including Joe Ellicott, a collectibles trader who was a groomsman astatine Greenberg’s wedding and received a 15-month condemnation aft pleading blameworthy to conspiracy to perpetrate ligament fraud and distributing a controlled substance.
English (US)