A former Republican campaign consultant who worked for disgraced Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg is asking a judge to throw out a federal indictment accusing him of paying bribes and taking kickbacks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for favorable treatment from the public office.
Michael Courtney Shirley’s defense attorney, Warren Lindsey of Maitland, called his client’s indictment “unconstitutionally vague,” in a motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Orlando.
Lindsey also asked U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell in a separate motion to exclude evidence that federal prosecutors plan to present that Shirley allegedly paid Greenberg $12,828 in kickbacks in 2017 and 2018.
Lindsey stated that $328.45 of that amount were three checks written to Joel Greenberg at the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office to pay for his vehicle registration fees.
“Something every Seminole County resident must do to have their vehicle properly registered,” Lindsey said in his motion filed Wednesday.
The remaining $12,500 was lawfully related to a real estate transaction in Brevard County, according to the motion.
Shirley faces four counts of fraud and a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He was arrested on Aug. 31 in western Texas, where he was living at the time. He has entered a plea of not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for July 25.
Federal prosecutors said that Shirley received as much as $466,625 from his scheme with the Seminole Tax Collector’s Office under Greenberg almost as soon as he took office in January 2017.
Greenberg has pleaded guilty to several federal charges — including trafficking a teenager, stalking a political rival, stealing identities and using taxpayer funds to pay for sex and cryptocurrency. He was sentenced last December to 11 years in federal prison.
Shirley’s company, Praetorian Integrated Services, was hired by Greenberg’s office in early 2017 for consulting services on the public office’s budget, strategic planning and providing advice on new technology, according to a county audit report and office documents obtained by the Sentinel. Greenberg paid Praetorian about $678,000 before it was dissolved in 2019.
The company also provided the Tax Collector’s Office with new signs, office supplies and polo shirts emblazoned with the office’s logo and Greenberg’s name that staff were required to wear, according to the documents.
According to the indictment, Shirley and his company submitted invoices to the public office to pay for those goods and services that were “inflated” to enrich him and Praetorian with tax money.
Shirley also agreed to pay bribes and receive kickbacks in exchange for favorable action from Greenberg, according to prosecutors. Those kickbacks included employing Shirley’s company and paying the “inflated invoices,” according to the indictment.
But Shirley’s attorneys point to recent U.S. Supreme Court cases, in which justices say that laws regarding “honest-services fraud” — which Shirley is charged with — are “unworkably vague.”
Shirley’s attorneys also stated that Shirley “routinely and lawfully” marked up his fees to Greenberg and all his other clients as part of his business to compensate middlemen.
“If there were any objection to any markup fees, that objection should have been handled as a state law contract issue, not a federal criminal issue,” Lindsey wrote in his motion. He said it infringes on Shirley’s Fifth Amendment rights because it violates the due process clause.
Shirley’s attorneys also seek to dismiss as evidence $3,000 that he donated on behalf of Greenberg to political campaigns — including $1,000 to former Longwood Commissioner Joe Durso’s candidacy for the Seminole County commission; $1,000 to Longwood Commissioner Mark Weller’s reelection campaign, and $1,000 to Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s election campaign.
“The defense objects to the introduction of this evidence as it is irrelevant, unduly prejudicial, impermissible character evidence and a violation of Mr. Shirley’s First Amendment right under the United States Constitution,” Lindsey said in his motion.
Last October, Joe Ellicott — a former sports radio talk show host and close friend of Greenberg — was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to acting as a middleman and paying thousands of dollars on behalf of an unnamed company to the former tax collector as part of a bribery scheme. Prosecutors and defense attorneys later said in court that the company was Praetorian.
Presnell reduced the amount of prison time for Ellicott after prosecutors said he provided them with key information in their case against Shirley.
In April, Greenberg and Ellicott were moved from federal prisons to the Orange and Seminole county jails, where they are currently residing temporarily. It’s unclear whether they were brought to the Central Florida area to take part as witnesses in the Shirley case.