Greenberg associate receives nine-year prison term for bilking investor of $9.8M

Keith Ingersoll, a long-time associate of former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, was sentenced Monday to just more than nine years in federal prison after pleading guilty in October to taking part in a real estate scheme that bilked an elderly investor out of millions of dollars and nearly his entire life savings.

“My actions were wrong,” said Ingersoll in a brief statement in court. “I wish I could take what I did back. But I can’t.”

But U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell was not swayed by Ingersoll’s remorse and called his actions of swindling an 80-year-old man as “shocking, quite honestly.”

Presnell then handed down a 109-month prison sentence. He also ordered Ingersoll to serve three years of probation after his release and pay back $12.7 million to the investor and $48,000 to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s for a real estate scheme coordinated with Greenberg that prosecutors called “fraudulent.”

Ingersoll could have faced as much as 20 years in prison. However, federal prosecutors said the Belle Isle man deserved a lighter sentence because he provided “substantial assistance” in their case against Michael Courtney Shirley, a former Republican operative and Greenberg campaign consultant charged with paying bribes and taking kickbacks of hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money from the tax collector’s office. Shirley is scheduled to go to trial in June, and Ingersoll could testify against him, prosecutors said.

Ingersoll also gave prosecutors “information to assist in another, non-public, investigation” besides Shirley’s case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

According to the plea deal, Ingersoll admitted to making $9.8 million by defrauding a local investor identified in court records only as “L.W.” for over five years beginning in 2016.

In the scheme, Ingersoll, business partner James Adamczyk and others convinced the investor that they needed $12.7 million to put down as deposits for land purchases throughout the country, including in Florida, Nebraska, Alabama and Illinois, as well as in the Bahamas, according to court records.

To make their plan seem legitimate, the team forged documents, created faked signatures, set up fake e-mail accounts and used different bank accounts, according to the plea agreement.

Then they quickly spent the investment money on luxuries for themselves, including high-priced sports cars, vacations on private airplanes, and trips to adult entertainment venues, court records state.

The investor, who did not want to be identified, sat quietly in court. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chauncey Bratt read a long statement from the investor, who often made large donations to various charitable causes, including those that help disadvantaged children. But now he can no longer contribute because he gave most of his money to Ingersoll, a friend he trusted, Bratt said.

“I’m 80 years old, and there isn’t enough time for me to recoup this money,” Bratt said in reading a statement from the investor. “I don’t know whom to trust anymore. I have lost my zest for life.”

Presnell noted that he is nearly the same age as the investor.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone to steal from me everything I have worked for,” Presnell said.

Ingersoll originally faced 41 charges. But prosecutors agreed to drop 36 of those charges in exchange for his cooperation on other cases. Ingersoll eventually pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one charge of wire fraud, one charge of attempted wire fraud and a charge of aggravated identity theft.

His business partner and co-defendant Adamczyk, who had pleaded not guilty, died in October of throat cancer that had spread into his lungs.

Ingersoll, 46, has been held in the Orange County Jail since Nov. 1 after violating conditions of his pre-sentencing release when he boarded a cruise ship and took a vacation to the Bahamas with his family. He also has agreed to forfeit the money he received from the scheme and other assets.

Presnell blasted Ingersoll for taking off on a cruise to a foreign country while under bond restrictions.

“I’ve sentenced more 1,000 individuals with similar restrictions, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this,” Presnell said. He said Ingersoll had an attitude of, “I’ll go where ever I darn well please.”

Ingersoll’s attorney, Andrew Searle, urged Presnell to sentence Ingersoll to a prison term of no more than five years because of Ingersoll’s lifelong struggles with mental health issues.

As a child, Ingersoll struggled in school and a doctor diagnosed him with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, according to the attorney’s memorandum. As an adult, Ingersoll suffered from bi-polar disorder, severe alcoholism and an addiction to Adderall, Searle wrote.

“The combination of excessive alcohol, Adderall and an untreated bipolar disorder resulted in extreme erratic behavior, and certainly impaired Mr. Ingersoll’s judgment in the last several years,” according to Searle’s memo.

But Presnell dismissed Searle’s pleas, saying “we all have issues” and stated that Ingersoll was raised “in a privileged environment” and that many other people struggle with alcoholism but don’t commit the same level of fraud.

“Mr. Ingersoll knew what he was doing,” Presnell said.

Ingersoll was a longtime friend of Greenberg, even before the latter was elected Seminole’s tax collector in November 2016. Greenberg hired Ingersoll within days after becoming tax collector as the office’s real estate advisor. Ingersoll and Adamczyk then took part in a property-flipping scheme.

Under the name of his newly-formed company, Adamczyk purchased a former bank building in Winter Springs for $680,000 and sold it hours later to the Seminole Tax Collector’s Office for $942,000, a price prosecutors said was “fraudulently inflated.” Ingersoll pleaded guilty to wire fraud for that transaction, according to court documents.

After that June 2017 transaction, Ingersoll chartered a private jet to a casino with Greenberg and gave him more than $1,000 in casino chips as a kickback, prosecutors said.

“It affected the public’s trust in government and it used their tax dollars,” Bratt said of the real estate scheme.

Greenberg resigned in June 2020 and pleaded guilty nearly a year later to six felonies, including sex trafficking of a child, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official.

Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December, and he is currently incarcerated in a minimum security facility in Miami.

Ingersoll “has caused significant financial harm to the victims,” Searle said in his memo. “Simply put, there is no justification for Mr. Ingersoll’s offense conduct.”

mcomas@orlandosentinel.com

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