A federal judge ordered Seminole County's former tax collector to jail Wednesday for two probation violations, including traveling to Jupiter in South Florida when an unspecified incident involving police happened Sunday.


What You Need To Know

  • Former Seminole County tax collector ordered held on 2 probation violations

  • Joel Greenberg faces several federal charges, including sex trafficking of child

  • Other charges are mostly fraud allegations; his trial set to begin in June

Joel Greenberg admitted to two violations. One involved traveling outside of the Middle District of Florida without a judge's permission when he went to Jupiter on Sunday. The other violation happened when a monitoring device at his home Sunday detected he wasn't there, a curfew violation.

Greenberg will be held until his trial, which is set to begin in June, under Wednesday's order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Embry Kidd.

The former tax collector faces a wide range of pending federal charges, including allegations of sex trafficking of a child.

Greenberg has pleaded not guilty to the sex-trafficking charge and all of the other charges filed against him since the first batch became public June 23, 2020.

In all, Greenberg faces 14 federal charges, mostly fraud allegations. Those charges are related to an alleged identity-theft scheme against a political foe.

Prosecutors allege that Greenberg used driver licenses that should have been shredded to create false IDs with his photo and someone else’s personal information.

Greenberg's duties as tax collector included renewing existing drivers licenses and making new ones.

He also had access to a secure database mostly used by law enforcement called The Florida Driver and Vehicle Information Database, or DAVID. He improperly used discarded licenses that should have been shredded and illegally obtained DAVID info to create new IDs for individuals involved in Greenberg’s alleged "sugar daddy" relationships, federal prosecutors allege.

Federal court records say the alleged sex-trafficking victim was between 14 and 18 during the “sugar daddy" relationship, which allegedly ran from May 2017 and November 2017.

Federal prosecutors say Greenberg “recruited, enticed, obtained, maintained, and patronized” the teen, though records don’t offer specifics.

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