ORLANDO, Fla. — Federal prosecutors investigating the crimes of former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg have charged two of Greenberg’s associates and accused them of a multimillion-dollar real estate fraud scheme, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.
Authorities say Keith Ingersoll and James Adamczyk, working with other unnamed co-conspirators, bilked an Orlando-area investor out of $12 million by persuading the investor to put up money for more than half a dozen fraudulent real estate deals in Florida, other states and The Bahamas.
Ingersoll and Adamcyzk claimed to the investor that they needed money to cover deposits on contracts they had signed to purchase various properties that they planned to immediately flip to other buyers — at least some of whom were fabricated, according to the indictment.
They told the investor that the money would be held in escrow. But they and the other co-conspirators instead spent the money “on themselves and for their own personal benefit, including for luxury cars, travel and adult entertainment,” according to the indictment.
The indictment charges both men with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, illegal monetary transactions and aggravated identity theft. They were arrested Monday, according to a federal court docket.
Under that deal, Greenberg had the Tax Collector’s Office purchase a former bank building on State Road 434 for $810,000 in public cash — hours after a company recently formed by Adamcyzk had bought it for $680,000.
Records show that Ingersoll — to whom Greenberg had given a $48,000 contract to serve as a real estate adviser — was also involved in the transaction on behalf of the tax office. Several of Greenberg’s other top advisers helped broker the deal, too.
An auditor who later examined the deal wrote that “the acquisition of this property has collusion written all over it.” Auditors also separately said they found “no evidence of work” from Ingersoll for his consulting contract.
ABC News reported in June that Greenberg investigators had “reached out to” Ingersoll as they expanded their focus into contracts Greenberg doled out during his time in elected office.
Both KI Consulting Group — the entity through which Greenberg hired Ingersoll — and Shooters Orlando Inc. — which Adamczyk used to buy the bank building he immediately re-sold to the tax office — were named in the indictment unsealed Monday.
Prosecutors say Ingersoll and Adamcyzk offered the fraud victim, who was not named in court records, 9% interest on their money. They claimed the properties were under contract but, in some cases, the owners hadn’t even been contacted about selling, the indictment said.
To conceal the fraud, the pair provided the investor with faked real estate contracts and other records, some of them featuring forged signatures or signed with fake names, prosecutors say. They also falsely claimed to have buyers lined up for the properties.
“(T)he potential buyers did not exist, had never been contacted about purchasing the real estate, or had declined to pursue a transaction,” the indictment said.
Meanwhile, the attorney who the investor believed was holding the money in escrow was not licensed to practice law — his license having been suspended in 2008 and never reinstated, the indictment states. The attorney was not named in the document.
According to federal prosecutors, the suspended attorney repeatedly directed large sums of fraudulently obtained money — nearly $1.2 million in one January 2018 transaction alone — to accounts held by Shooters Orlando or KI Consulting Group.
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