Sheriff Carmine Marceno Beat an FBI Kickback Probe, Watched a DUI Ethics Case Die, and Still Has Ken Romano’s Complaint in Limbo

LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA — Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno did not wander into the job. In 2018, then-Governor Rick Scott appointed him when Mike Scott stepped aside. Sean Hannity called him a friend on national television. George W. Bush and Laura Bush wrote checks. Donald Trump posed for the photograph that has sat on this article since The AEGIS Alliance published the roster. A sheriff with that kind of cover is a sheriff who expects the paper to stay in the drawer.

It did not stay in the drawer.

The videos above are The AEGIS Alliance’s own record: State Attorney Amira Fox’s recycled judicial signature, and the felony-corruption file this newsroom put on the internet while Marceno was still introducing himself as the new law-and-order brand. Fox is the elected prosecutor for Florida’s 20th Judicial Circuit. She and the sheriff have raised money for each other. That is not a rumor. It is the operating system of the circuit, and it is why a whistleblower and a camera, not a press release, were what finally made a recusal official.

A jeweler, a no-show contract, and a stack of cash

Ken Romano, a Bonita Springs jeweler Marceno once called his « most loyal friend, » sat on a Lee County Sheriff’s Office consulting contract that paid $4,000 a month in taxpayer money starting in January 2022, then $5,700 a month after a $1,700 bump in March. Romano later said the extra $1,700 was supposed to go, in cash, to the sheriff’s father, Carmine Marceno Sr., for a Mercedes and insurance. He said he did not have to log hours or show up. On undercover FBI audio later published by the Florida Trident, Marceno told Romano that what he did with « personal money » was personal business. Sources close to the state investigation have said investigators also wanted a recording of Romano and Marceno Sr. in which the father allegedly admitted taking the car money. Marceno Sr. died in December 2024, while the federal file was still open. He cannot be asked again.

The News-Press obtained security video of Marceno taking a stack of cash inside Romano’s jewelry store. Romano also says he bought the sheriff a $9,035 grand piano in 2020 and $2,377.03 in furniture at El Dorado on January 20, 2022 — three days before the consulting contract was inked — and that none of it landed on Marceno’s financial-disclosure forms. Florida ethics law requires gifts of $100 or more to be reported. The piano has since aged past the five-year limitations period. The furniture, which Romano says he put on a Visa card, has not. Marceno’s lawyer has called the kickback claim « completely false. » The sheriff’s office cut Romano loose in August 2022, citing another agency’s investigation of the jeweler. Ending the contract is not the same thing as explaining the cash.

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office ran the federal case. On November 17, 2025, prosecutors wrote Marceno’s attorney, Donald Day, that the file was closed. The letter, which the defense released, said the decision rested on « information presently known to the government and the principles of federal prosecution, » and that the office would « pursue no further action. » Closing a federal case is not a finding that the cash was a loan, that the hours were worked, or that the disclosure forms were complete. It is a decision not to charge. Marceno has not been charged with a crime in the Romano matter. He is presumed innocent. He is also still the sheriff.

One ethics case died in public. The other did not.

In January 2025, Fox pulled her office off a separate state stalking case involving Romano, citing her « professional relationship » with the sheriff. Governor Ron DeSantis reassigned it. The AEGIS Alliance had been pointing at that conflict since 2020, in the reporting on the Fox signature et dans corruption file. It took a stalking case and a governor to make the recusal a public act.

The Florida Commission on Ethics then picked up pieces the Bureau had dropped. Romano’s complaint — gifts, cash, the car money — was filed in early 2026. On June 5, 2026, the commission, meeting in closed session, gave investigator Ronald Moalli a 60-day extension past the 150-day statutory clock so he could chase the payments to Marceno Sr. The Florida Trident reported the order. Former internal-affairs chief Mike Hollow, who later ran against Marceno and lost, is listed as a witness. A separate ethics complaint aimed at Undersheriff John Holloway, tying him to the contract story, was tossed in June 2026 for lack of legal sufficiency. The commission said that one rested on hearsay rather than firsthand evidence. That dismissal is not a dismissal of the sheriff.

A second matter, built on a 2024 Justice Department whistleblower letter from former LCSO commander James Bogliole, was set for an executive-session probable-cause hearing in Tallahassee on August 28, 2026. Bogliole, a former NYPD detective, says he was pressured to alter reports after an off-duty deputy was stopped going more than 100 mph on suspicion of DUI in 2023 and driven home instead of to jail. WGCU et les Florida Trident reported the hearing date. Marceno was not the named target of that file. His command staff was. When the commission published its actions, it found no probable cause to believe Commander Rob Casale, Chief James Rankine, Major Chris Reeves, Undersheriff John Holloway, Major Mark Shelly, or Chief Matthew Sands misused their positions in the traffic stop. The DUI allegation, as an ethics case against those six, is over unless someone reopens it with new evidence. The deputy was not charged in public with the DUI. The reports Bogliole says he was told to change are not in the public ethics order.

Romano’s complaint did not get that kind of ending. On July 30, 2026, fifty-five days after the extension, he sent a notarized letter asking to withdraw it. « I am requesting this withdrawal for good cause, as the stress of this administrative process has severely impacted my health and exacerbated a diagnosed medical condition (PTSD), » he wrote. Florida law does not let a complainant kill a case by fatigue alone. The commission can keep going if it decides the reason is not good cause, or if the investigation is already far enough along that the public interest outruns the complainant’s nerves. The case had been set for the same closed Friday session as the Bogliole matter. On September 3, 2026, the commission’s public list of actions did not include it. Spokeswoman Lynn Blais told WGCU there was nothing she could release, that she could not confirm or deny the file, and that « everything we do becomes public at some point. » As of that week, the kickback complaint was in a legal limbo: a withdrawal request, no announced probable-cause finding, and a statute that still allows the commission to finish what Moalli started.

Marceno won election after the appointment and won again in 2024. His next sheriff’s race is 2028. He has not been charged. The people who installed him — Scott, Hannity, the Bush checks, the Trump photograph — have not had to answer for the consulting contract, the furniture receipt, or the cash on a jewelry-store camera. Fox’s office spent years as the local address for allegations against the sheriff she campaigned with, until a stalking case forced a recusal The AEGIS Alliance had described in 2020. Parents of Jeannie Ashley Ohlman are still waiting on a different kind of answer from the same agency, a death the medical examiner called an overdose and the family does not believe was fully investigated. A North Fort Myers man, Enzo Vincenzi, has publicly accused the office of a violent false arrest. Those files are not the Romano complaint. They are the reason a closed FBI letter is not the last word in Lee County.

The AEGIS Alliance printed this beat when the political class wanted a « DOJ and state investigation » headline treated as noise. The FBI letter arrived. One ethics case against the command staff died in a press release. The case about the money did not get a public ending. Romano tried to take his name off it. The commission has not said whether it will let him. Until that order exists, the sheriff in the photograph is still the subject of a state ethics file that outlived the federal one.

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Related from this desk: the Marceno corruption file, les Amira Fox forgery cover-up, #JusticeForJeannie, les Enzo Vincenzi false-arrest account, Mike Scott dubbed kingpin, and more in Police Accountability et Crime News.