Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno’s Corruption File: Gag Orders, Jail Abuse, a Closed FBI Probe, and Two Live Ethics Cases

LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA — Carmine Marceno took the Lee County Sheriff’s Office from Mike Scott and kept the same critics in the same box. Scott Huminski was gagged from reporting death threats to the sheriff. He was jailed for reporting a crime. State Attorney Amira Fox prosecuted him. The AEGIS Alliance published the paper trail in 2020. The names on that trail are still in office.

Huminski, a Lee County activist and the frontman of Scott X and the Constitution Commandos, started catching death threats from Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2013. When he tried to report them to then-Sheriff Mike Scott, the office answered with a protective order that made contacting the sheriff or his staff a contempt crime. Reporting a crime became the crime. That gag is still the operating system. It now covers Marceno’s shop the same way it covered Scott’s. Our original video is above. Scott’s era is on tape here: https://youtu.be/7h7dkKVkBM4.

The jail piece is why this file is not a personality feud. Huminski says Lee County Jail put him in a 55-degree cell without adequate clothing, denied him a private cell as a disabled man, and swapped his 22-year blood-pressure drug for diuretics he was not told he was taking. Those are ADA and Florida disability-statute problems if they happened as described. They are also the kind of closed-door treatment a county jail can inflict on anyone who lands there for a drunk night or a contempt docket. The Department of Justice was already on a civil-rights paper trail in 2020. No public charging decision ever came out of that round.

Fox is the other half of the machine. She is the elected state attorney for the 20th Judicial Circuit. She and Marceno have raised money for each other. In the Huminski case she printed a June 5, 2017, Circuit Court show-cause order, hand-wrote a County Court docket number on it, and filed it as a charging document in a second court without a new judicial signature. That is the forgery allegation we published with the stamps. Details, exhibits, and the double time-stamps are in our companion report, the Amira Fox forgery cover-up. No prosecutor in that circuit has charged it. The statute of limitations on Florida forgery and official misconduct against public employees runs for years after they leave office. They have not left.

Marceno was appointed in 2018 after Scott leaned on then-Governor Rick Scott. Sean Hannity called him a buddy. George W. Bush and Laura Bush wrote checks. The Guardian walked through the campaign-finance and « qualified officer » questions in 2019. None of that removed him. He won election. His next sheriff’s race is 2028.

The later federal file is separate from Huminski and still unfinished in a different way. Former LCSO consultant and Bonita Springs jeweler Ken Romano was on a $5,700-a-month consulting contract. Romano later told investigators the extra $1,700 a month was supposed to go in cash to Marceno’s father, Carmine Marceno Sr., for a Mercedes and insurance. The sheriff’s office cut Romano loose in August 2022, citing another agency’s investigation of the jeweler. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office ran a kickback and misappropriation probe, including undercover recordings. On November 17, 2025, federal prosecutors closed it without charges. Marceno’s lawyer published the letter. Marceno called the kickback claim « completely false. »

The tapes did not go in a drawer. The Florida Trident obtained undercover FBI audio in which Marceno tells Romano he has his « back » on payments the public would not find, and treats them as personal business. He does not admit instructing the kickback on that tape. Romano’s ethics complaint says he did. Highlights of that call:

Marceno Sr. died in December 2024, during the federal investigation. Romano alleges a controlled call in which the father admitted taking the car money. In January 2025, Fox pulled her office off a separate state stalking case involving Romano, citing her professional relationship with Marceno — the same conflict this newsroom has been pointing at since 2020.

Closing a federal case is not the same as clearing a public-ethics docket. The Florida Commission on Ethics extended its investigation of the Romano payments by 60 days in June 2026. WGCU reported on August 26, 2026, that a second sealed ethics matter, built around a 2024 whistleblower letter from former LCSO commander James Bogliole, was set for an executive-session probable-cause hearing in Tallahassee. Marceno has not been charged with a crime in any of this. He is presumed innocent. He is also still the sheriff, still appearing with Fox, and still the subject of a live state ethics file after the FBI walked away.

The AEGIS Alliance is not in the business of waiting for a conviction to print a public record. The gag order, the jail complaints, the recycled judicial signature, the Hannity friendship, the Romano contract, the closed FBI letter, and the ethics extensions are all on paper. Related from this desk: #JusticeForJeannie, DeSantis as the « new Nixon » on the forgery file, the 2025 Enzo Vincenzi false-arrest account, Mike Scott dubbed kingpin, LCSO fabricating evidence, and Pam Bondi. Crime desk: Crime News and Police Accountability.

Sign Scott Huminski’s Change.org petition: http://chng.it/KzQyvZwtLb

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