ORLANDO, Fla. — Just four months into his tenure as Seminole County tax collector, Joel Greenberg inked a curious property transaction through his public office: He purchased a former bank building on State Road 434 for $810,000 in public cash — hours after a recently formed company bought it for $680,000.
On top of that, records show Greenberg gave the company, Shooters Orlando Inc., an extra $132,000 for the office furniture and a bank vault. Shooters Orlando was formed a few months earlier by a close friend and former business partner of Keith Ingersoll, who was hired by Greenberg as an “adviser” soon after he took office as tax collector in January 2017 — and who, records show, was involved in the deal on behalf of the tax collector’s office. Records also show that some of Greenberg’s other top advisers helped broker the deal, too.
When auditors took an in-depth look at the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office following Greenberg’s arrest and resignation last year, they identified numerous examples of waste in his spending and hiring practices. But with the Shooters Orlando deal, they went further, calling it “possible fraudulent activity.”
“The acquisition of this property has collusion written all over it,” Dan O’Keefe, an auditor with MSL CPAs & Advisors, added in the detailed report commissioned by Seminole County.
Auditors also identified as potentially fraudulent purchases made by Joe Ellicott, a close friend, former radio show co-host and groomsman of Greenberg’s whom he’d hired as the Tax Collector’s Office’s “supervisor of facilities.”
According to audit documents, Ellicott — who owns Uncle Joe’s Coins, Currency & Collectibles in Maitland — used a credit card issued to him by the tax office to purchase up to $5,700 in antiques, sporting goods, knives, batteries and hardware tools.
“We believe these are items for his personal store in Maitland,” the auditor wrote in the report. “These purchases could be considered fraudulent activity.”
Officials with the Tax Collector’s Office on Wednesday said Ellicott had not reimbursed the office for the expenditures.
Now, Ingersoll and Ellicott have reportedly become figures in the sprawling criminal case that sparked Greenberg’s downfall, according to an ABC News report last week that said federal investigators have targeted other players in Central Florida politics and taken an interest in questionable contracts the former tax collector doled out.
Authorities have “reached out to” Ingersoll, according to the report, which added that Ellicott “could emerge as a key witness” in the case with information about potential sex trafficking offenses “damning to others beyond Greenberg.”
Greenberg was charged with 33 federal crimes before pleading guilty to six counts in a deal that requires him to cooperate with authorities. Among other crimes, he confessed to embezzling money from the tax office to buy himself cryptocurrency and trafficking a 17-year-old for commercial sex.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 19 in federal court in Orlando.
Ingersoll and Ellicott could not be reached for comment. Neither man has been charged or publicly implicated in the case against Greenberg. Federal prosecutors subpoenaed the audit documents last October, but would not comment on whether anyone named in the audit is facing charges.
On Aug. 22, 2016, eight days before Greenberg defeated longtime incumbent Ray Valdes in the Republican primary, virtually assuring him Seminole’s tax collector job, James Adamczyk filed paperwork with the state of Florida to start Shooters Orlando, Inc.
On May 1, 2017, Adamczyk through Shooters signed an agreement with BB&T representatives to purchase an empty bank building at the corner of State Road 434 and Vistawilla Drive in Winter Springs for $680,000.
The same day, he sold it to the Seminole Tax Collector’s Office — through Ingersoll — who was acting as the tax collector’s real estate adviser.
Adamczyk and Ingersoll are friends and former business partners. In February 2014, the pair formed Ingersoll Hospitality LLC. The company was dissolved by the state in September 2015 for failure to file an annual report, according to state records.
In addition, transaction records show that an attorney that Ingersoll has worked with frequently in his private affairs — R. Lee Dorough — served as the escrow agent in the bank property deal.
Emails show that two of Greenberg’s closest advisers worked on the deal: attorney Wade Vose and political consultant Mike Shirley, both of whom got contracts from the Tax Collector’s Office.
Vose said he could not comment because of attorney-client privilege. Neither Dorough nor Shirley responded to requests for comment.
At the time, Greenberg said he wanted to open a new Tax Collector’s Office branch near the Winter Springs area to serve residents in east Seminole County.
The Tax Collector’s Office paid $810,000 in public funds for the building and $132,000 for the “furniture, fixtures and safe,” according to court records and audit documents.
Adamczyk did not return calls for comment. However, in 2017, he told a Sentinel reporter that he was interested in the property because he wanted to launch a bar and eatery called Shooters at that location.
“I was going to put up a restaurant there,” Adamczyk said. “But then one of his (Greenberg’s) people from his office called me and said they wanted that location.”
Ingersoll told a Sentinel reporter in 2017 that he, Greenberg and Adamczyk did not make the deal for their personal benefit.
“I will put my hand on the Bible and say there is no collusion between Joel Greenberg and Jim Adamczyk,” Ingersoll said at the time. “My job was to help him (Greenberg) find properties, and that Winter Springs property happened to come up.”
O’Keefe, who conducted the county audit, described the transaction as clearly questionable.
“Unfortunately, with only looking at documentation of the Tax Collector’s side and available public records, we cannot make a definitive determination of collusion,” the auditor wrote in his memo. “We can say that there is possible fraudulent activity. … Even if you can say this was a legal transaction, you can say the Seminole County Tax Collector paid $262,000 in taxpayer’s dollars more than he needed to.”
Shooters Orlando Inc. was dissolved by the state in September 2017, four months after the transaction, for failing to file an annual report.
About a year later, the former bank building was converted into a tax collector’s branch office.
Ingersoll’s firm, KI Consulting had a $48,000 contract with the Tax Collector’s Office from September 2017 until last September. Auditors wrote that there was “no evidence of work” and staff said they were “unaware what his (Ingersoll’s group) did” for the office.
A Boone High School and University of Central Florida graduate, Ingersoll worked as a substitute teacher for Orange County Schools and as a tennis instructor for the city of Orlando before launching his real estate firm.
In November 2012, he was terminated as an auxiliary police officer with the Belle Isle Police Department for having “an established association” with a friend and business partner who had multiple outstanding felony warrants and not notifying the police department, records show.
At that time, auxiliary police officers were used by the Belle Isle Police Department to assist sworn officers, for example, to control traffic during road races. The department has since phased out using auxiliary officers.
One of Joel Greenberg’s groomsmen at his 2016 wedding, Ellicott was hired as supervisor of facilities at the Seminole Tax Collector’s Office the day Greenberg took office, Jan. 3, 2017, at a salary of $68,467 a year, according to public records.
He was later promoted to assistant deputy tax collector — leapfrogging longtime employees with more experience, according to agency sources — and drawing an annual salary of $97,248.
The total cost to the Tax Collector’s Office of employing Ellicott for the nearly three years and 10 months — including salary, health insurance, retirement and life insurance — totaled $361,141, according to audit records.
“According to staff did not do much,” the auditor wrote in the report regarding Ellicott. Former employees told the Sentinel they hardly ever saw him at the office. One former employee told the Sentinel that they referred to Ellicott as “one of Joel’s friends on the payroll.”
Greenberg and Ellicott, who goes by the nickname “Big Joe,” had earlier hosted a sports talk show together on an Orlando AM radio station before Greenberg was elected. He has filed twice for bankruptcy, including in 2015, when he listed a shotgun and an AR-15 rifle as among his only possessions, according to court documents.
According to a report by the Daily Beast, Greenberg had a private exchange with Ellicott on the encrypted app Signal while the tax collector was being investigated by federal authorities for sex trafficking, in which Ellicott told Greenberg that he was afraid that others in their circle of friends would also face legal consequences for having sex with the 17-year-old girl Greenberg has since confessed to trafficking.
The website Politico also reported that Ellicott — along with U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Greenberg and former state Rep. Halsey Beshears — was listed in a December 2020 grand jury subpoena issued to another person related to the federal authorities’ investigation into sex trafficking.
Ellicott remained on the public payroll until last September, when then-acting Tax Collector Cynthia Torres fired him and two others of Greenberg’s top-level hires.
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(Staff writer Jason Garcia contributed to this story.)
