ORLANDO, Fla. — Before he resigned in disgrace last year, Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg doled out dubious contracts to a number of Republican politicians, political strategists and other allies, many with links to the scandals that have rocked Florida politics this month, according to audit documents, emails and other records reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel.
The records also provide further details of Greenberg’s friendships with two of the powerful figures buffeted by the controversies: U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz and lobbyist Chris Dorworth.
Greenberg has been cooperating with federal investigators since last year, according to a New York Times report Tuesday, which said Greenberg had told authorities that he and Gaetz “had encounters with women who were given cash or gifts in exchange for sex.”
Prior to his downfall, Greenberg, the records show, took a taxpayer-funded trip to Miami to meet with Gaetz and received an invitation from Dorworth to a VIP experience at an event with former President Donald Trump in which Dorworth promised, “They will feed us all booze and give us a ride as well as an escort to our luxury boxes.”
Viewed together, the records depict a Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office that, under Greenberg, turned into a source of money for people either personally close to Greenberg or plugged into GOP politics.
Auditors, hired by Seminole County commissioners to probe Greenberg’s spending after he resigned last year, found ample evidence of potential “misuse of taxpayer dollars” and a series of vague consulting contracts for which they found no evidence of work.
“We consider most of these contracts to be either excessive or unnecessary,” the auditors wrote.
Among the people who got such consulting deals from Greenberg:
—Matt Morgan, a former professional wrestler who would soon run for Seminole County Commission against an opponent of Dorworth’s proposed mega-development, known as River Cross.
—Megan Zalonka, a woman who, according to a LinkedIn profile and social media posts, was simultaneously working for Jason Pirozzolo. Pirozzolo, a medical marijuana investor and GOP fundraiser, is now reportedly being scrutinized by federal investigators over a trip to the Bahamas with Gaetz, in which Pirozzolo, a pilot, allegedly paid for travel and female escorts.
—Eric Foglesong, a political consultant who provided support to a mysterious independent candidate who filed to run — but then did no campaigning — in a high-stakes state Senate election.
Greenberg was arrested last year in the early stages of an investigation that at first appeared centered on attempts to smear an opponent of the River Cross development who had filed to oppose Greenberg for reelection but has since sprawled in many directions.
Most notably, investigators are now reportedly targeting Gaetz over allegations that he and Greenberg paid for women — and at least one underage girl — to travel and have sex with them. Investigators have also learned of an alleged conversation between Gaetz and Dorworth about the state Senate race controversy, according to the New York Times.
Gaetz has broadly denied any wrongdoing and specifically said that he has never paid for sex nor had sex as an adult with an underage girl.
Dorworth, who did not respond to requests for comment, told the Times last week that he had no involvement with the independent candidate in the Senate race that was eventually won by state Sen. Jason Brodeur, a Republican from Sanford and longtime friend of both Dorworth and Gaetz. Dorworth resigned from his job last week at a prominent Tallahassee lobbying firm in order, he said, to avoid becoming a distraction to the firm.
Greenberg, meanwhile, faces more than 30 federal charges and is expected to agree to a plea deal with prosecutors by May 15.
As tax collector, Greenberg handed out jobs and contracts to a number of close friends and political allies — including three of the groomsmen at his wedding. But he also put some prominent political figures on the public payroll.
One of them was Morgan, the former World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler who is now a city commissioner in Longwood.
Records show that Morgan, who once wrestled under the name “The Blueprint,” started a new company in October 2019 called “Blueprint Enterprises LLC.” That same month, the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office began paying Morgan $4,500 a month.
A spokesman for the Tax Collector’s Office said Monday they could find no contract with Morgan’s company. Auditors hired by Seminole County after Greenberg was arrested last year wrote they could find “no evidence of work product,” according to audit records.
Morgan did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Emails suggested that Morgan was added to a team of employees and consultants assigned to promote Greenberg’s office on Twitter and Instagram.
Morgan got the gig about eight months before he launched a campaign against an incumbent Seminole County commissioner who opposed River Cross. That’s the proposed housing development Dorworth has been trying to build for several years in a rural part of Seminole.
Gaetz immediately endorsed Morgan’s campaign. But Morgan ultimately lost to incumbent Commissioner Bob Dallari.
But the payments from Greenberg’s office helped Morgan get his finances in order before that campaign.
Morgan had been carrying a roughly $37,000 federal tax lien for unpaid income taxes since 2011. But records show that Morgan was released from the lien on Oct. 9, 2019 — two days after he launched Blueprint Enterprises. Payments from the Tax Collector’s Office began three weeks later; the office ultimately paid Morgan’s company $40,500.
Morgan was later reelected to the Longwood City Commission.
Separately, credit card records show that Greenberg used an office Visa to make two $3,500 payments — one in April 2018 and another in January 2019 — to a company called “MZ Strategy Group” for what was identified in audit records as “consulting services.”
Records show that MZ Strategy Group was set up by a Winter Park woman named Megan Zalonka. She appears, based on her LinkedIn profile and social media posts, to be a former model who also works as director of communications for the American Medical Marijuana Physicians Association.
That’s a company run by Pirozzolo, a marijuana entrepreneur, hand doctor and Republican fundraiser who, according to a report last week by CBS News has been swept into the Greenberg and Gaetz investigation as a result of trip to the Bahamas with Gaetz in which Pirrozolo allegedly provided female escorts. Pirozzolo has not responded to requests for comment.
Zalonka could not be reached for comment. A man who answered the door at an address linked to her said she didn’t live there, but showed a reporter a grand jury subpoena for her he said he’d received months ago, which called for her to testify last August.
An image on social media shows Gaetz posing for a picture with Zalonka and another woman — AMMPA Executive Director Savara Hastings — at a meeting organized by the association in Miami.
According to an agreement Greenberg and Zalonka signed in January 2018, Zalonka was supposed to help with social media marketing and other communications. But employees weren’t sure what she actually did, according to audit records.
The first $3,500 credit card payment to Zalonka caught other Tax Collector’s Office employees by surprise, according to one email. Greenberg told them that he would personally find Zalonka’s tax forms.
Audit records show that Greenberg also used an office credit card to pay $10,000 in late 2017 to Foglesong, a longtime local political consultant. Auditors described them as “unknown payments ... for ‘community relations consulting.’”
Foglesong said Monday he was hired as a consultant to help determine whether Greenberg could work with his counterpart in Orange County, Florida, to open more offices along the county border. Foglesong said he ended the contract after determining what Greenberg had proposed wasn’t possible.
Foglesong, who pleaded guilty last year to grand theft in connection to charges that he stole money from a political committee connected to Orange County Sheriff John Mina, is best known for work he has done for Democratic candidates. But records show he has supported a number of Republican candidates in Seminole County.
Foglesong was also one of the only donors last year to Jestine Iannotti, a woman who filed to run as an independent candidate in a Seminole and Volusia-based Senate district. Iannotti, who has since moved to Sweden, did no public campaigning herself. But a political committee backed by a dark-money donor spent up to $180,000 on mailers promoting Iannotti that were worded to court left-leaning voters. Jason Brodeur, the Republican and friend of Dorworth, later defeated Democratic candidate Patricia Sigman.
The same dark money group funded nearly identical ads promoting independent candidates in two other state Senate races in Miami that were also eventually won by the Republican candidates.
Last month, the state attorney in Miami-Dade County filed campaign-finance-related charges against one of those independent candidates and former Republican state Sen. Frank Artiles, accusing Artiles of illegally paying the independent candidate to run. The Democratic candidate in that race lost by just 32 votes.
Artiles, who is friends with Dorworth and Gaetz, was in Orlando at Brodeur’s election night victory party, where, according to the Miami Herald, he was overheard boasting about his role in that Miami race.
And the New York Times reported last week that investigators leading the Greenberg investigation may now be scrutinizing a conversation between Dorworth and Gaetz in which they allegedly discussed recruiting a third candidate in Brodeur’s race.
A number of other high-profile figures also landed contracts from Greenberg.
For instance, office and audit records show a company set up by former Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel was paid $60,000 last year for “consulting services.” Office employees later told auditors that they weren’t sure what Ertel’s company — Public Efficiency Group Inc. — was being paid for because “he never did anything for us,” according to audit records.
The auditors also said they found “no evidence of work product” from Ertel, whom Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chose to be secretary of state in December 2018 only to have Ertel stepped down weeks later after photos surfaced of him in blackface makeup.
Ertel said Monday he had a yearlong agreement to provide consulting services to the office, which paid him $5,000 per month. His work comprised “a full-fledged operational audit,” including providing recommendations on changes that would lead to cost savings, he said, citing monthly slide presentations he provided focused on subjects like improving wait times and employee satisfaction. The entry from June, when Greenberg was arrested and resigned, was a one-page synopsis of Ertel’s efforts to help the office with crisis communications.
Ertel said he knew Greenberg because they were both constitutional officers and they would occasionally see each other at political events.
“We weren’t ‘boys,’” Ertel said. “We didn’t hang out socially or anything like that.”
His wife, Republican communications strategist Michelle Ertel, was also given a job by Greenberg.
Auditors also said they couldn’t determine what state Rep. Anthony Sabatini worked on during the fall of 2019 when Greenberg paid the Howey-in-the-Hills Republican $7,500 over 2 1/2 months.
But emails show one area Sabatini worked on: driver’s licenses. On Oct. 21, 2019, Sabatini emailed Greenberg to provide Greenberg a list of situations when tax collectors were forbidden from issuing new driver’s licenses.
Prosecutors say one of the crimes Greenberg committed was manufacturing fake driver’s licenses.
Sabatini did not respond to messages seeking further explanation of why Greenberg had apparently asked him about driver’s license law, though there is no indication that it had anything to do with what prosecutors say were Greenberg’s illegal activities.
Beyond all the contacts, audit records and emails provide more details about how closely Greenberg worked with Gaetz and Dorworth.
Credit card records show, for instance, that Greenberg charged nearly $1,000 in July 2017 for he and one of his deputies to spend the weekend at the Four Seasons in Miami where Greenberg said they met with Gaetz. Emails also show that Greenberg once volunteered to put his name on an editorial provided by Gaetz’s congressional staff that defended Gaetz against criticism after he invited a white nationalist to the 2018 State of the Union Address.
Other records show that Greenberg, who gave Dorworth’s firm a lobbying contract shortly after he took office as tax collector, sometimes blind copied Dorworth when emailing with other government officials.
And Dorworth included Greenberg in a select group of local politicians and other prominent figures that Dorworth invited to exclusive events surrounding former President Donald Trump’s June 2019 reelection campaign kickoff in Orlando — including a private reception at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando and luxury boxes for Trump’s rally at the Amway Center.
“The 100,000 or so people wanting in to this event dictate that we need to meet at the Ritz Carlton at 3:45 p.m.,” Dorworth wrote in the invitation, which was also sent to Brodeur, the newly elected state senator; Sabatini and fellow state Reps. Scott Plakon, a Longwood Republican, and David Smith, a Winter Springs Republican; former Greater Orlando Aviation Authority board member Randall Hunt; and River Cross attorney Tara Tedrow, among several others.
“I have asked for an exemption for any that can’t make it and the secret service said ‘haha we are the Secret Service, so ... no,’” Dorworth added. “Good news is if you’re at the Ritz we will have a party and a ride in.”
