FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A state investigation into Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony’s lies on official applications is closed, and he will not be charged.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said some of the sheriff’s falsehoods were too long ago to prosecute, and the most recent allegation — that he lied to obtain a new driver's license — will not be pursued because the clerk’s memory of the incident is fuzzy.
“Although it appears that Tony knowingly and willfully (misled) public servants in the performance of their official duties by making false statements in writing on his official applications (regarding his traffic citation, drug use, and arrest history) ... a criminal prosecution of these actions would be negated” by the Florida statute of limitations, a memo from FDLE agent Keith Riddick says.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel detailed the sheriff’s lies in a news article last March.
As a 14-year-old, Tony shot and killed an 18-year-old from his neighborhood, was arrested on a murder charge, and stood trial for the shooting. He argued it was self-defense, and was found not guilty, according to newspaper clippings from the time.
He kept it a secret. On forms for law enforcement jobs, he repeatedly lied about his past, answering “no” to questions such as “have you ever been detained by any law enforcement officer for investigative purposes.” Even his entry into law enforcement — attendance of the basic recruit academy — rested on an application with untrue answers about his past.
FDLE found that in 1993, then 14-year-old “Tony was arrested and charged with murder, possessing instruments of crime, possession of an unlicensed firearm, and carrying firearms on public streets or public property in Philadelphia.”
State investigators couldn’t find records detailing Tony’s case, or the trial, or explaining whether the records were expunged — largely because so much time has passed.
They said he also lied about past traffic tickets, drug use and a charge — ultimately dismissed — for passing a bad check.
The lies to Coral Springs Police Department when he applied for a job there were blatant, according to the FDLE report:
—Tony answered “no” when asked “Were you ever in a fight in which a weapon was used?”
—Tony answered “no” when asked “Have you ever injured or caused the death of another person?”
—Tony answered “Fighting” when asked “What is the most serious thing you have ever done in your life?”
FDLE also found records of a 1992 probation case in Philadelphia listing Tony as the defendant; no further details could be found, the report says. Another probation case involving Tony was filed in 1994, FDLE found, arising from a driving violation.
When FDLE asked to interview Tony, last June, he declined, the report says.
The closure of the case comes just days after Tony fired the head of the deputies’ union, Jeff Bell, for dishonesty. Tony said an internal affairs probe found Bell to be corrupt and untruthful. Tony didn’t respond to a phone call, email and text message for comment.
Tony’s past, and his lack of truthfulness, dogged him on the campaign trail when he successfully ran for election in 2020.
He said he’s a reformer whose detractors used his past to try to defeat him. Tony told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that his shooting of 18-year-old Hector “Chino” Rodriguez was “the most difficult, painful experience” of his youth. It was an act of self-defense, he said.
“He (Rodriguez) pulled his gun out and made threats, saying he didn’t have any issue shooting me and my brother,” Tony told the Sun Sentinel two years ago. “… We ran into the house and he chased after us. Fortunately I was able to get my father’s gun,” Tony said. “Before he was able to shoot me and my brother, I was able to defend myself and shoot him.”
They were teenagers in the Badlands neighborhood of Philadelphia, an area known for violence and open-air drug dealing.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Tony to the county’s highest law enforcement post in January 2019, after removing Sheriff Scott Israel from office. Israel was removed for failures in leadership that culminated, the governor maintained, in deputies failing to rush in to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while children and educators were being murdered inside on Feb. 14, 2018.
In May 2020, the Florida Bulldog broke the news about Tony’s teenage shooting.
“It’s not like he’s my sheriff,” DeSantis said after the revelation. “I didn’t even know the guy. It was not like he was a political ally of mine.”
Tony was recommended for the office by Andrew Pollack, father of Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollack. He and Tony worked out at the same Coral Springs gym. Tony was a former Coral Springs police officer.
When he was vetted by FDLE, Tony wrote in his biography that “when drugs and violent crime were consuming the majority of his peers, Greg (Tony) took to sports to find an escape,” the FDLE report recounts.
He checked “false” to the statement “I had a criminal record sealed or expunged.” Though lying on that form would be a misdemeanor, investigators couldn’t find documentation in Pennsylvania “to account for the permanently removed/erased information from their system.”
“Although the records pertaining to the arrest of Gregory Tony for the murder of Hector Rodriguez appeared to have been expunged, (Office of Executive Investigations) Inspectors were unable to find any documentation which identified who requested and/or caused said expungement,” the FDLE report says.
In May 2020, the Sun Sentinel was first to report that the FDLE would look into Tony’s sworn affidavit that asserted that he had never had a criminal record sealed or expunged. Then in November 2020, the FDLE confirmed it was investigating whether the sheriff lied on an affidavit to be appointed sheriff. The agency at the time said the probe included “other undisclosed matters that will remain confidential.”
In a Jan. 26 memo released Monday to the Sun Sentinel, the state attorney’s office in Fort Myers said it investigated Tony at the request of the FDLE’s Office of Executive Investigations.
FDLE investigators found that Tony committed “false affidavit perjury,” a third-degree felony, when he obtained a replacement driver license, according to the FDLE case report released Monday.
The case was transferred to State Attorney Amira Fox in Lee County because the Broward state attorney’s office would have a conflict of interest in investigating the sheriff.
Her office looked at the “only potentially viable claims” — Tony’s visit to the Lauderdale Lakes driver’s license office on Feb. 1, 2019, 22 days after he was appointed sheriff. The question: Did he commit perjury when he said he’d never had a suspended license?
Tony’s license was suspended five times in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s, state investigators found.
Even though much time had passed, the clerk at the Lauderdale Lakes driver's license office remembered Tony’s appearance there because it was “take your child to work” day, and the sheriff posed for photographs with some employees’ children and with the clerk herself.
But the clerk couldn’t say for sure whether she’d asked him about suspensions “in any state” — or whether she’d asked him the question at all.
She remembered trying to hurry him through the process, the memo from special prosecutions chief Anthony Kunasek says.
“The clerk’s uncertainty” doomed the case, the memo says, and it is now closed. Kunasek suggested the entire case be presented to Florida’s Commission on Ethics for review.
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