Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, Backed by Trump Hannity Bush and Rick Scott, Beat an FBI Kickback Probe and Still Faces Florida Ethics Cases

Carmine Marceno with Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Sean Hannity. The photo is the point. The investigations are the rest of the file.

LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA — Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno did not wander into this job. Rick Scott put him there in 2018 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 picture on this page. The AEGIS Alliance published that roster in 2020 because a sheriff with that kind of cover is the kind of sheriff who expects the paper to stay in the drawer.

It did not stay in the drawer.

The original 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.

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 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. Marceno, on undercover FBI audio later published by the Florida Trident, told Romano that what he did with « personal money » was personal business.

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. 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.

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office ran it. On November 17, 2025, federal prosecutors closed the file without charges. Marceno’s attorney published the letter. Closing a federal case is not the same thing as proving the cash was a loan.

Fox recused. The ethics commission 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. It took a whistleblower and a camera to make the recusal official.

The Florida Commission on Ethics then picked up what the Bureau dropped. Romano’s January 2026 complaint — gifts, cash, the car money to Marceno Sr. — was still live in June 2026, when the commission extended the investigation 60 days. Marceno Sr. died in December 2024, while the federal probe was open. A former internal-affairs chief, Mike Hollow, who later ran against Marceno and lost, is listed as a witness.

A second sealed ethics 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 29, 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. The file is sealed until the commission resolves it. WGCU and the Florida Trident reported the hearing. No public finding had been released as of September 1, 2026.

Marceno won election after the appointment and won again in 2024. His next sheriff’s race is 2028. He has not been charged with a crime in the Romano matter or the Bogliole complaint. He is presumed innocent. He is also still the sheriff, still in the photograph with the people who installed him, and still the subject of live state ethics files after the FBI walked away.

The AEGIS Alliance printed this beat when it was a « DOJ and state investigation » headline and the political class wanted it treated as noise. The names on the original roster did not recede. Related from this desk: the Marceno corruption file, the Amira Fox forgery cover-up, #JusticeForJeannie, the Enzo Vincenzi false-arrest account, Mike Scott dubbed kingpin, and more in Police Accountability and Crime News.

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