Former Joel Greenberg associate sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud
Michael Shirley, a longtime consultant to disgraced Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, was sentenced Tuesday to just over seven years in federal prison for fraudulent actions that netted his company $536,402 in public money through a bribery-and-kickback scheme.
As he handed down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell called Shirley’s crimes a “very serious offense” that “eroded the public’s trust” in government.
“He has no regret. He has no remorse,” Presnell said of Shirley, whom he blamed for some of Greenberg’s misdeeds. “He convinced a public official to raid the public funds.”
Shirley, 40, is the seventh Greenberg associate — and the last of the key players — sentenced for a slew of crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor, stalking, bribery, selling drugs and stealing identities during the former tax collector’s tenure from January 2017 through June 2020.
“I have never seen anything like it, and I hope I never see anything like it again,” said Presnell, who was named to the federal bench in 2000 by President Bill Clinton and practiced law since 1966.
In asking for leniency in the federal courtroom, Shirley told the judge that he is an only child, and that his parents are sick.
“They don’t have a lot of time left,” he said.
But Shirley then quickly added he plans to appeal the jury’s guilty verdict of five counts of fraud. He requested to have his prison sentence delayed until he’s exhausted all his appeals.
Presnell declined, and Shirley will have to report to federal prison in the coming weeks. Shirley also was ordered to two years of probation and pay Seminole County $536,402.
Shirley faced up to a decade in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Federal prosecutors recommended nine years in prison.
“His conduct victimized every taxpayer in Seminole County,” said Amanda Daniels, an assistant U.S. attorney, in recommending the higher sentence. “And it chipped away at the trust that they have in their government.”
Shirley’s court-appointed attorney, Michael Nielsen of Winter Springs, requested Shirley serve four years in prison. He noted Shirley did not have a previous criminal history, and he called the sentencing guidelines in Shirley’s case as “an unfair and unreasonably harsh” punishment.
“This is not a man out on the street, causing violent crimes,” Nielsen said.
Shirley’s father James Shirley, who was the sole witness at the Tuesday hearing, testified his son “was a great kid” growing up, who was willing to help people.
During the four-day trial last July, federal prosecutors explained to a jury that Shirley submitted faked invoices at inflated prices totaling $43,990 for goods and services that his company Praetorian Integrated Services allegedly performed for the Tax Collector’s Office. He also fraudulently received from the Tax Collector’s Office an additional $492,412 in payments, according to federal officials.
“The defendant did little to no work,” Daniels said. “He used this position to enrich himself.”
Greenberg hired Praetorian on the day he took office in January 2017, paying Shirley $12,500 a month with Tax Collector Office funds for consultant work. Shirley had previously worked as a political consultant for Greenberg in his campaign to unseat longtime incumbent tax collector Ray Valdes in the Republican primary in August 2016.
A senior accountant for the Tax Collector’s Office testified during the trial that she repeatedly noticed expensive invoices for Praetorian in unusually round numbers. Also, two Praetorian employees testified it was a mystery to them what exactly Shirley did for Greenberg’s office to receive the public money.
On behalf of prosecutors, Greenberg’s onetime best friend, Joe Ellicott testified that he went to Shirley’s office in 2019 to pick up $6,000 to deliver to the tax collector. That money came from the inflated-price sale of a bank building to Seminole County for use as a new tax collector’s office, a scheme that became one of prosecutors’ key arguments urging a long sentence for Shirley in a hearing last week.
Seminole County Commission Chair Jay Zembower submitted a letter last week to Presnell on behalf of the county commission, which the judge read portions out loud in court before handing down his sentence.
“The defendant’s criminal dealings with the former tax collector have eroded the public’s trust of its elected officials in Seminole County,” Zembower said in the letter. “The after effects of the Defendant’s criminal conduct still echo throughout Seminole County and are the subject of ongoing public discourse in the press, on social media platforms, and around the community.”
Greenberg is currently serving an 11-year sentence at a low-security federal prison in Miami after pleading guilty in May 2021.
His attorney, Fritz Scheller, said this month that Greenberg is cooperating with a House Ethics Committee investigation into whether former friend, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, had sex with an underage girl while in office, according to a report in the New York Times on Feb. 9.
Greenberg previously had met with and cooperated with investigators with the U.S. Attorney’s Office into the sexual allegations regarding Gaetz. However, the Justice Department closed the long-running investigation in February 2023 — two months after Greenberg was sentenced — after officials concluded it would be difficult to present the case in court.
