Joel Greenberg to pay nearly $1.9M to Seminole County, attorney says

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. - Seminole County Attorney Bryant Applegate announced on Tuesday that there has been a verbal agreement with former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg for him to pay restitution of over $1.87 million.

The attorney said that at either sentencing or prior to, the funds must be available for Seminole County to collect. If they are unavailable, the County Attorney's Office, if approved by the Board of County Commissioners, will further pursue the payments owed. 

Greenberg's sentencing has been delayed until March 2022. In May 2021, he plead guilty to six of 33 charges after agreeing to cooperate with federal investigators.

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As part of his plea deal, Greenberg admitted that he recruited women for commercial sex acts and paid them more than $70,000 from 2016 to 2018, including at least one underage girl he paid to have sex with him and others. He must cooperate with investigators, make financial restitution, register as a sex offender, and testify if called in other cases.

Prosecutors said that Greenberg met the girl online — from a website where she was posing as an adult — and had the first meeting with her on a boat, paying her $400. He later invited her to a hotel in Florida, where he and others would have sex with her and also supplied the girl and other people with ecstasy, according to the plea deal. In total, prosecutors say Greenberg had sex with the girl at least seven times.

"Greenberg also introduced the Minor to other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts with the Minor," the plea agreement states. The plea deal does not identify the men.

Prosecutors also said Greenberg also used his position as the Seminole County tax collector to access a state driver’s information database to "investigate" the women he was having sex with and had searched for the underage girl at least once because he "had reason to believe the minor was under the age of 18," the plea agreement says.

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