ORLANDO, Fla. — Jestine Iannotti, the former Seminole County substitute teacher whose independent 2020 bid for Florida Senate District 9 was central to the statewide “ghost” candidate scandal, was booked into the Seminole County Jail on Wednesday morning.
She was jailed about 11:30 a.m. and released roughly two hours later after posting $4,500 bond.
Her brief detention provided a rare glimpse of Iannotti, 36, who never campaigned for the seat and spent weeks prior to the November 2020 election in Sweden, where she moved after the race was decided.
Mailers promoting her campaign — commissioned by a Tallahassee operative as part of what Miami prosecutors have described as a vote-siphoning scheme to help Republicans win key Senate races — featured a stock photo of a Black woman but none of the candidate.
Iannotti, 36, faces five misdemeanors and one felony: commission of a false or fraudulent act. She’s accused of accepting an illegal $1,200 contribution from political consultant Eric Foglesong and, along with him, reporting false donor names to the state for other contributions.
In text messages collected by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Iannotti and Foglesong appeared to frankly discuss the deception.
“So unofficially who gave the extra money,” she asked, responding to a list of names and amounts. “Me,” Foglesong replied. Iannotti then asked Foglesong if he was “OK with that even though you know I’m not gonna win.”
“Yep,” he said, according to an FDLE report.
Her campaign reported only four donors: Foglesong, Todd Karvoski, Steven Smith and Adam Heath.
Foglesong, 45, surrendered to the jail Tuesday, facing five counts including three felonies. He was later released after posting bail.
Karvoski told the Orlando Sentinel — and, later, FDLE agents — that he never gave to Iannotti and didn’t know who she was. The FDLE report shows he described Foglesong as an occasional drinking buddy who he’d once given his address so Foglesong could pick him up on the way to a bar.
Smith also told agents he never gave to Iannotti. But unlike Karvoski, he knew how his name wound up on her ledger: He said his cousin Ben Paris — Seminole County’s current GOP chair — called him in June 2020 and asked to use his name to donate to a friend’s campaign.
Paris, 38, is now also facing a misdemeanor charge of making a contribution through or in the name of another.
At the time of the 2020 District 9 race, Paris worked for its eventual winner, Sanford Republican Jason Brodeur, at the Seminole County Chamber of Commerce. Paris was the chamber’s vice president of operations until he resigned Tuesday in light of his criminal charge.
He had not been booked into the jail as of Wednesday afternoon.
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