Bonita Springs jeweler Ken Romano, a key witness in the federal investigation of Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, stares into the camera and addresses an audience of one about rumors circulating that the corruption case against the county's top cop is going to be killed by the Trump Administration.
In the video, Romano, whom Marceno once called his “most loyal friend,” singles out trash mogul Anthony Lomangino — a large campaign donor to both the sheriff and President Donald Trump — and U.S. Attorney General Palm Bondi.
“Hey Carmine, pay attention,” Romano begins a video he posted last week to TikTok. “So, word on the street from your own people, a lot of your own people, is that Lomangino and Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, is gonna take all this, whatever’s happened, and put it on the shelf for you. Is that true? Answer me, answer the public. Is that true?”
The 56-year-old Romano knows Marceno well — for several years the two men were nearly inseparable. They shared a love of gambling — and Romano has alleged he bailed the sheriff out on large monetary losses and gave him extravagant gifts, all unreported to the state, totaling more than $200,000, including a well-documented $9,000 grand piano.
In a security video taken last year inside Romano’s jewelry store, Marceno can be seen accepting, for an unknown reason, a large stack of cash from Romano.
The federal investigation centers on a $5,700-a-month consulting contract with LCSO provided by Marceno to Romano in 2022. Romano alleged the contract required no work of him and the sheriff had him give a monthly $1,700 cash stipend from it to his father, Carmine Marceno Sr., to help pay off a Mercedes Benz. Later that year the contract was terminated when the sheriff’s office learned Romano was under investigation by another law enforcement agency, according to sheriff’s office records.
Romano, a New Jersey native, has never made it clear what prompted him to go to the FBI last year. But his complaint against Marceno sparked an investigation during which federal agents recorded phone calls between the two men and also focused on work done on the sheriff’s home by local contractors. Shortly after the Florida Trident first broke the story of the investigation last September, a federal grand jury was convened.
That investigation has been shrouded in mystery for months. Marceno has avoided all questions from the media on the topic, but released a statement claiming the allegations are politically motivated and false.
Earlier this year Marceno floated the idea of running for the Congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds, who is vying for governor. “I love President Trump,” he said at the time.
It was a clear appeal to the president — and speculation has persisted about whether Trump, who has proven willing to pardon and drop major corruption cases involving his supporters, will terminate the Marceno investigation.
When reached on the phone, Romano refused to comment on the video but made it clear he had no substantiated information the case was being dropped and released the video in response to sheriff’s office rumors that the case is being dropped due to Marceno’s relationship with the garbage mogul Lomangino, who indeed is a notable figure in the orbits of both Marceno and Trump. Marceno did not respond to an interview request extended by the Florida Trident through the sheriff’s office public affairs office.
Former LCSO deputy and internal affairs commander Mike Hollow, who accompanied Romano to the FBI office, had previously been optimistic the federal investigation would lead to charges against the sheriff. Having heard the same rumors as Romano about the case being scuttled at the top, he now voices serious doubts.
“I know the evidence the federal government has in its possession,” said Hollow, who ran against Marceno in 2024 as a write-in candidate. “There’s no denying the criminal charges are there — my concern is with the federal government’s inability to perform with the highest integrity.”
Who is Anthony Lomangino?
When the Brennan Center for Justice tallied up the top contributors to pro-Trump PACs during the 2024 election, Lomangino was high on the list, clocking in at $9.25 million. It was a staggering bookmark to the previous campaign support he’d given Trump in years past, including a $150,000 contribution back in 2018 to the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust for Trump associates indicted in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In May, Trump provided a bit of payback when he nominated Lomangino, who lives in Palm Beach and is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, to serve on the United States Postal Service board of governors. In a social media post, Trump called Lomangino a “fantastic businessman and reformer” who “knows how to fix a problem.” Trump also recently appointed Lomangino’s wife Lynda to the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees.
The trash mogul has also been one of Marceno’s top campaign contributors, personally giving $75,000 to the sheriff’s PAC, Friends of Carmine Marceno. Contributing $100,000 was the firm Southwest Waste Services, which was led by his son Charles and has vied for Lee County government contracts. Charles Lomangino provided another $50,000 to the PAC. Southwest Waste was sold late last year to another garbage firm, according to published reports.
In addition to the political cash, the sheriff has also had financial ties to longtime Lomangino employee Tony Badala, who was a central figure in Southwest Waste. According to the sheriff’s financial disclosures, he received a $356,409.57 mortgage loan from an unregistered company tied to Badala. The loan was used by Marceno to purchase a $615,000 condo in Sarasota last year. A Marceno attorney, veteran ethics and elections lawyer Mark Herron, told the Fort Myers News-Press, which first reported the loan, Marceno paid the money back when he sold the condo earlier this year.
Badala, also an outspoken supporter of Trump, was one of 23 people arrested in a 2005 sting in Broward County that targeted Bonnanno crime family capo Gerard Chilli. Badala initially was charged with racketeering and bookmaking, but later pled guilty to a misdemeanor gambling count and was sentenced to six months probation.
When reached by telephone, Badala didn’t answer any questions before hanging up. Subsequent voice mails asking for his side of the story regarding the Marceno loan and 2005 arrest weren’t returned. “You should know better than to print anything that guy says, from what I understand,” Badala said of Romano before terminating the call.
Suspicions of unsavory ties regarding Lomangino date back decades to his family’s business in New York. A state investigation aimed at breaking up mob control of the Long Island carting business netted brother Fred Lomangino on a charge of attempted grand larceny in 1984, according to the New York Times.
Details of that case were unavailable, but Gangsters Inc., a news site that covers organized crime, detailed a meeting that involved Fred Lomangino pressuring a pair of garbage company owners to either sell their business to reputed Luchese crime family captain Salvatore Avellino or be met “with an accident.” Fred Lomangino pled guilty to a charge of coercion in the 1980s, according to a 1995 Crain’s New York Business article.
The same Crain’s story detailed the travails of Anthony Lomangino during a federal investigation of New York City’s carting business that was aimed at breaking up a mob-run cartel in the mid-1990s. While Lomangino wasn’t charged in the case or accused of any specific wrongdoing, Crain’s reported that then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said Lomangino’s company at the time, ReSource NE, Inc., had “long cooperated with trade groups that run the cartel.” A former city official told the publication that Lomangino had “one foot in and one foot out” of those cartel-run trade groups.
In July 1997, the regulatory Trade Waste Commission forced Lomangino’s resignation from his company, according to trade publications at the time as well as an exhaustive Columbia University thesis paper by James H. Fitzgerald that meticulously detailed the history of organized crime in the New York garbage business. Though still never indicted or accused of misconduct, Lomangino left New York following the $200 million sale of his company and moved to South Florida, where he started a new garbage company, Southern Waste Systems, and now lives in one Palm Beach mansion while recently selling another for $39 million.
As Lomangino has expanded his Florida business, his exit from New York has at times been the subject of controversy. In 2012, a Southwest Waste lawyer told the Palm Beach Post Lomangino left New York not because he was forced out by regulators but because he refused to cooperate with the cartel. “Anthony Lomangino has never been charged with a crime, never indicted and really the reason why he left New York is because he wouldn’t play that game with the cartel people,” attorney Bruce Rogow told the newspaper. Efforts to reach Lomangino, including a message sent to a business email, were unsuccessful. This article will be updated should he respond.
Whatever the truth about Lomangino’s exit, Marceno “needs to be transparent and honest with the general public,” Hollow said of the sheriff’s ties to the two men. “He owes it to the public to explain his relationships with both of those individuals on a business and personal level.”
Will Marceno’s case be squashed?
During his time in the White House, Trump has proven lenient on law enforcement officers who have been investigated — and convicted — for serious corruption. In May, he pardoned a sheriff in Virginia who had just been sentenced to ten years in prison after being caught on FBI recordings selling law enforcement credentials to local businessmen.
In his first term, Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who’d been convicted in Arizona of contempt of court for defying a federal judge’s order that he stop racially profiling Latino drivers and arresting them based on their immigration status.
More recently, it was learned Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, received $50,000 cash in a restaurant take-out bag from undercover FBI agents allegedly in exchange for his help in getting them contracts in a future Trump administration. While the FBI was waiting for Homan to follow up on his promise to provide favors from Trump, Bondi’s justice department killed the case — and Homan remains the top border official in the United States.
Trump has also shown no qualms about pardoning supportive politicians who have committed crimes. The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington recently compiled a list of 16 politicians whom Trump has granted clemency for crimes, collectively saving them more than 50 years in prison.
Romano, himself a Trump supporter, clearly holds out hope the Marceno case won’t be scuttled. In the video, after scolding his former pal Marceno for looking “foolish” on television (“Where do you get the nerve to even smile anymore on TV?”), Romano says he’s not convinced his old friend will be let off the hook by the Justice Department.
“Lomangino, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General for the United States, they’re gonna help you, just gonna make it all go away?” he asks. “I don’t think so. You know why? Because these are called smart people that actually get it. And do you know what you are? You’re nothing more than a real slow learner, you understand?”
About the author: Trident senior editor Bob Norman is a veteran investigative journalist whose work has won dozens of awards and led to criminal charges and the removal of several corrupt public officials. He can be reached at norman@flcga.org. The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.
