Joel Greenberg — the disgraced Seminole County tax collector convicted of using taxpayer funds to pay for sex, steal identities, stalk a political rival and traffic a minor in one of Florida’s most stunning cases of political corruption — is asking for a pardon from President Donald Trump.
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Greenberg, who pleaded guilty in May 2021 in federal court, is currently serving an 11-year sentence at a low security prison in Miami, including time served since his arrest. He’s scheduled to be released in August 2030, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“Whatever wrongs I’ve done, I have more than paid for in the nearly 6 years of incarceration,” Greenberg said in a message to the Sentinel through the federal prison system. “This has been an extremely difficult time for me and my family.”
In his clemency plea, Greenberg, 41, said did “everything to help Trump” win the 2016 presidential election and served “the MAGA movement with everything I had.”
Greenberg is among thousands of federal prisoners who also are requesting presidential clemency, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Since taking office again in January 2025, Trump has granted executive clemency to more than 1,700 individuals, including roughly 1,500 pardons for those connected to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on U.S. Capitol as well as billionaires such as Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, Canadian mogul Conrad Black and Lake Nona developer Joe Lewis.
But Orlando attorney Fritz Scheller, who represented Greenberg after he was charged, said Tuesday Greenberg’s chances of a pardon are slim to none.
“Like Odysseus, Mr. Greenberg has embarked on an arduous journey of atonement,” Scheller said in a written statement. “Nevertheless, I ain’t no god (hell, not even a demigod), and thus I am not representing Mr. Greenberg in his latest quest.”
Scheller pointed out that Greenberg already received a good deal from the federal government, having faced up to 31 years in prison before opting for a plea agreement with federal prosecutors that included cooperating with investigators on other cases.
“His prison sentence of 11 years was one of the largest, if not the largest, reduction for cooperation in the [court’s] Middle District of Florida,” Scheller said.
Republican Seminole County commissioner Amy Lockhart said pardoning Greenberg “would be a gut punch to the taxpayers.”
“In addition to the irreparable damage that he caused individuals and families in our community — including his own — his actions shredded the very fabric of trust that our citizens deserve to have in their elected officials,” she said. “He and his cohorts committed a level of depraved malfeasance Seminole County had not seen before, and we hope never to see again.”
Greenberg was a rising star in Seminole GOP politics when he was elected at age 31 in 2016 in a mostly self-funded campaign, defeating longtime incumbent Ray Valdes in the Republican primary and a write-in candidate during the general election.
He was also an early local backer of Trump, who was also first elected that year. In spring 2019, Greenberg — in just his third year as tax collector — was invited to Trump’s White House for the annual Easter Egg Roll event with his then friends, former U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz and developer Chris Dorworth.
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But after one controversy after another, his use of taxpayer funds for his benefit drew the attention of federal investigators — leading to his downfall.
Greenberg, for example, paid more than $70,000 — most of it with a county American Express card — in more than 150 separate transactions to engage in commercial sex with women at area hotels, including with a 17-year-old girl.
“The biggest injustice though has been my being forced to plead guilty to a crime where the ‘victim’ lied about her age,” Greenberg said in his email.
The ensuing scandal played a role in Gaetz withdrawing his nomination to become attorney general in 2024.
Greenberg also was charged with using equipment at the Tax Collector’s Office to create fake IDs. And he handed out millions of dollars in public money to friends and political associates by creating nebulous salaried positions within the Tax Collector’s Office.
He also used tens of thousands of dollars in public money to buy cryptocurrency and attempted to hide the purchases by transferring the funds into his personal accounts.
Greenberg was first arrested in June 2020 and resigned from office days later. Eventually, he would be charged with 33 federal crimes. But prosecutors dropped 27 in exchange for the plea deal.
Greenberg said he felt “remorse for what I have done” at his sentencing hearing.
Besides Greenberg, two of his former convicted associates also requested presidential pardons in 2025.
In February 2024, Greenberg’s consultant Michael Shirley was sentenced to just over seven years in federal prison for frauds that netted his company $536,402 through a bribery-and-kickback scheme with the Tax Collector’s Office.
Shirley also is currently incarcerated at the federal correctional facility in Miami and scheduled to be released in June 2029.
Nabil Dajani was sentenced in August 2023 to more than six years in federal prison after pleading guilty to helping Greenberg and others fraudulently obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal loans during the Covid pandemic.
Dajani is currently housed at a residential reentry facility, or halfway house, in Wildwood. He is scheduled to be released in December.
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