The reported underage sex investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has suddenly thrust a lesser-known—and even stranger—criminal case into national prominence.
According to The New York Times, the probe examining Gaetz’s alleged payment for a 17-year-old girl’s travel alongside him actually derived from a previous U.S. Justice Department case against a Florida man named Joel Greenberg.
It’s unclear how Greenberg first became associated with Gaetz. Both were rising stars in Florida’s Republican Party in 2016. They took turns on stage at Donald Trump’s campaign stop in Sanford, Florida, on Oct. 12, 2016. Gaetz publicly lent his support for Greenberg, cheering him as “a disrupter” who should run for Congress. And then there are the selfies they took together with political operative Roger Stone in 2017, at AIPAC in 2018, and at the White House in 2019.
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But while Gaetz is still in office—pending his dreams of a post-Congress media career—his younger pal is fighting for his freedom.
Greenberg’s story is one of a young local elected official in Central Florida with radical ideas who quickly blew up his political career, his marriage, and is now sitting in jail waiting for a federal trial on charges of sex trafficking of a child, identity theft, stalking, illegal monetary transactions—and much, much more.
His defense attorney, Fritz J. Scheller, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday evening that he would not say whether his client is cooperating with the Justice Department on its reported probe into Gaetz’s activities.
Instead, he said Greenberg is “persistent in his plea of not guilty, and we're preparing our defense for trial in June.”
Greenberg co-founded an advertising company that specialized in outdoor, radio, and digital ads. He sold it in 2015. The next year, at the age of just 31, Greenberg successfully ousted the previous longtime Seminole County tax collector, Ray Valdes, who was caught acquiring tax-delinquent properties and selling them at a profit.
Greenberg’s campaign promised “a strong ethical code.” That didn’t last long.
He immediately started to anger fellow county officials. In February 2017, just one month after being sworn in, Greenberg decided to move his agency out of the rent-free government offices in Sanford to a spot that cost more than $100,000 a year, because he found the building “disgusting.” Fellow officials began to question his management of finances.
The new tax collector continued down that path when he informed the county commission of his plans to hire 19 additional workers to do tasks the agency never did before—for an additional $518,457. It was money that otherwise would have gone toward municipal improvements like fixing roads and improving public parks.
He angered people even more when he instituted a new policy allowing his government employees to openly carry firearms when seizing property from tax-delinquent businesses. Widespread local public outcry noted the irony in Greenberg's assertion that he was “a big believer in the Second Amendment” while he was arming asset-seizing government administrators. (That policy got scrapped when Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi stepped in.)
Greenberg crossed the line again in December 2017 when he flipped on his SUV's flashing lights—posing as law enforcement—and pulled over a woman who he thought was driving too fast. In a subsequent report later that month, Seminole-Brevard State Attorney's Office prosecutor Stacey Straub Salmons determined the incident was not illegal but, “One could be left to conclude that Mr. Greenberg’s decision to wear his badge... was a purposeful attempt, on his part, to exert undue power and influence.”
The Daily Beast obtained a copy of the disposition letter from the prosecutor’s office, which declined to say whether it is now helping federal investigators on the reported Gaetz probe.
The very next month, in January 2018, Greenberg tried to weasel his way out of a speeding ticket by trying to pressure a Lake Mary Police officer to extend him a “professional courtesy” for being “a constitutional officer,” according to police video obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, which has consistently covered every controversial misstep by Greenberg.
By April of 2019, a quiet federal probe into Greenberg began. Greenberg’s political career tanked when a U.S. Secret Service investigation went public. On June 17, 2020, federal law enforcement arrested him in Lake Mary, according to his arrest warrant.
The case initially hinged on an allegation that Greenberg, in his primary re-election campaign for Seminole County tax collector, had gone to ridiculous lengths to bash his Republican political opponent. Brian Beute was a fine arts teacher at Trinity Preparatory School. Greenberg allegedly set up a fake Twitter account pretending to be Beute, then created a fake Facebook account pretending to be another teacher, and sent several letters to the school with lurid accusations that his opponent had engaged in sexual misconduct with a student.
In court, federal prosecutors said investigators found that the online accounts were created from an IP address that traced back to Greenberg’s home—and that Greenberg's DNA and fingerprints were on nine of those letters. The initial, two-count indictment accused Greenberg of stalking and misuse of identification.
But as the investigation expanded, so did the charges.
On Tuesday, prosecutors filed a third version of the indictment, now listing 33 counts that range from sex trafficking to wire fraud. Investigators say Greenberg recruited at least one teenager between 14 and 17 years old to engage in a “commercial sex act” on more than one occasion, in May and November 2017, in Central Florida and elsewhere. They also say that Greenberg used his privileged access to Florida’s driver license database to look up private information on “individuals” with whom he “was engaged in ‘sugar-daddy’ relationships.”
Additionally, Seminole County residents would turn in their old driver’s licenses to the tax collector’s office to have them shredded, and investigators say Greenberg used that as an opportunity to make fake IDs. They also allege Greenberg tried to run a bitcoin-mining operation out of the county tax office in an attempt to make $400,000 for himself.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida is prosecuting Greenberg. William Daniels, a spokesman there, declined to discuss the reported Justice Department probe into Gaetz.
Although Greenberg has spent much of the last year out of jail, he was arrested again on March 3 for violating the conditions of his release. Greenberg traveled outside of his permitted zone by driving two hours south in a bungled attempt to visit his estranged wife at her mother’s home in Jupiter, Florida, according to a person with direct knowledge of the incident. Greenberg did not contest that he violated the pretrial release agreement, according to minutes of the hearing.
Greenberg’s estranged wife declined to comment publicly, out of concern for her personal safety.
Mark L. Horwitz, who initially represented Greenberg alongside Vincent Citro in this criminal case until December, told The Daily Beast he “couldn’t possibly comment” on any link between his former client’s case and an investigation involving Gaetz.
