ORLANDO, Fla. — Joe Ellicott — a close friend of Joel Greenberg and a former radio talk show host — has agreed to plead guilty to paying thousands of dollars in a cash bribe to the disgraced Seminole County tax collector on behalf of an unnamed company, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
In return, Greenberg would pay the company to “provide goods and services” at inflated prices to the public office as part of a “corrupt” conspiracy, according to court documents.
Ellicott, 43, has also agreed to plead guilty to illegally selling more than $5,000 worth of Adderall, a prescription drug used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to federal prosecutors.
The two felony charges — conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud, and distribution of a controlled substance — each carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and fines totaling more than $5.2 million. A hearing for the plea agreement is scheduled for Feb. 9 at the federal courthouse in downtown Orlando.
Ellicott, 43, who also owned Uncle Joe’s Coins, Currency & Collectibles in Maitland, served as a groomsman at Greenberg’s wedding in the summer of 2016. And shortly after Greenberg took office in January 2017, he hired Ellicott to serve as the office’s “supervisor of facilities” or “special projects manager.”
Greenberg is in the Orange County Jail awaiting sentencing in late March after pleading guilty last May to six felony charges, including sex trafficking of a child, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud, creating fake driver’s licenses and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
Ellicott’s attorney Joseph Zwick said he thinks his client is only facing charges because of his connection to Greenberg and that the accusations against him are “de minimis,” or minor.
“The big difference between Joe and Mr. Greenberg was that Joe was not elected by the people of Central Florida and Mr. Greenberg was,” Zwick said.
Still, Ellicott is hoping to avoid jail time, Zwick said. And federal prosecutors said Ellicott has agreed to cooperate in other investigations.
The plea agreement does not name Greenberg, but it does reference a “public official” whose description and other details closely match the former tax collector.
According to the plea agreement, Ellicott acted as a middle man between the company’s owner and a public official in coordinating illegal bribes and kickbacks between January 2017 and sometime in 2019.
“The purpose of the conspiracy was for the Public Official to secretly use his official position to enrich himself by soliciting and accepting gifts, payments and other things of value (from the company and its owner) in exchange for favorable official action,” according to court documents.
Federal prosecutors said the company’s owner paid bribes to the public official and then submitted several fraudulent invoices to the public office that included prices for goods and services that were purposely inflated to enrich the company, according to court records.
In one instance, for example, the company’s owner paid out a bribe and kickback of $6,000 to the public official on Sept. 25, 2017, according to investigators. And Ellicott agreed to act as the middle man between the company’s owner and the public official for that bribe, according to federal prosecutors.
The company’s owner withdrew the cash from a local bank account, then called Ellicott to arrange for him to pick up the money and deliver it to the public official that night, according to the charging affidavit.
The company’s owner and Ellicott attempted to conceal the illegal transaction by “devising a false cover story” that the $6,000 handed to Ellicott was for the purchase of sports memorabilia and other items at Ellicott’s store, Uncle Joe’s Coins, Currency & Collectibles in Maitland.
But federal prosecutors say that the owner of the company “then and there, well knew, the payment was a bribe and kickback to the public official in exchange for favorable official action,” the charging document states.
The plea agreement also mentions a second company. The second company would provide goods and services to the public office, but its bills would be sent to the conspiring company. It then would submit those bills on its letterhead as inflated invoices to the public office and receive payments.
The conspiring company would then “keep the amount by which the (other) company’s invoice had been inflated,” according to court documents.
In March 2017, for example, the second company provided the conspiring company with invoices totaling $13,900. The conspiring company then created inflated invoices for those goods and services that totaled $19,870, federal prosecutors said.
When federal authorities began investigating the fraud in April 2019, the conspiring company’s owner helped the public official falsely state that the $6,000 was for the sale of leftover furniture from that public official’s 2016 election campaign. The owner even created a fake receipt to show authorities.
“As part of the (conspiring company’s) efforts to conceal the bribe and kickback that had been paid in September 2017, the (company’s owner) provided the public official with a fake receipt dated September 25, 2017, that claimed to reflect the sale of two desks, a credenza, a conference room table with four chairs, an end table, an office cubicle, an office chair, a book case, two whiteboards, and a television for $6,000,” federal prosecutors said in the plea agreement.
An audit of the Seminole County Tax Collector’s office following Greenberg’s arrest in 2020 found that Ellicott used a credit card issued to him by the public office to purchase up to $5,700 in antiques, sporting goods, knives, batteries and hardware tools.
The auditors wrote that they thought the purchases were for Ellicott’s store and could be fraudulent. But Zwick said Wednesday he didn’t think those accusations were true.
Regarding the drug charge, Ellicott has agreed to plead guilty to illegally selling Adderall. For example, one of his customers purchased 100 pills, paying Ellicott more than $5,000, over the course of two years through a Venmo account, according to court documents.
To hide the purchases, Ellicott and his buyer agreed to write checks to Ellicott’s coin business. From January 2017 to January 2019, Ellicott’s buyer wrote more than 25 checks totaling more than $4,000 to Uncle Joe’s Coins to hide the drug purchases, prosecutors said.
Known as “Big Joe,” Ellicott worked as co-host on the “Baumann and Big Joe” show on CBS Sports Radio Orlando.
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