When Lee County Undersheriff John Holloway’s daughter Morgan and her fiance Joe Trubilla posted a wedding registry on October 21, 2022, they appealed to friends and relatives for spa dates, a cruise, and other presents before their March 2023 wedding.
But it was her father’s law enforcement agency that provided perhaps the biggest gift of all: a $5,000-per-month Lee County Sheriff’s Office consulting contract for Trubilla to run a youth boxing program.
The contract was inked in December 2022, but sheriff’s office records show Trubilla actually started on the LCSO payroll three months earlier in September. Sheriff Carmine Marceno then amended the contract in June 2023 to raise Trubilla’s pay to his current rate of $5,650 a month, or $67,800 per year.
The Florida Trident learned of the arrangement with Trubilla following its previously published report on LCSO’s hiring of Undersheriff Holloway’s wife, Kathleen, as an attorney at the agency with a salary of $155,000. With the undersheriff pulling in a salary of $280,000, the grand total in annual income for the undersheriff’s family from LCSO stands at just over half a million dollars.
Both John Holloway and Marceno refused to comment for this story, but the sheriff’s public information office defended Trubilla’s contract in a statement to the Trident, writing: “The Lee County Sheriff’s Office has many family members throughout the agency serving in various positions. Known to his students as ‘Boxer Joe,’ Mr. Trubilla has done a great job working days, evenings, and weekends, building our critically important Youth Boxing Program.”
Suspended from bodybuilding competition
Trubilla, whose wife is Holloway’s daughter from a previous marriage, didn’t respond to calls for comment. It appears he commutes from an address in Tampa to LCSO’s community outreach center in the Gulf Coast Town Center in south Fort Myers to run the program, which is open to children aged eight to 17 and works with minors in the county’s civil citation program.
“Joe Trubilla credits the sport of boxing with saving his life,” reads his bio on the boxing program’s webpage. “As a teenager, amateur boxing matches kept Joe out of trouble and helped him focus on his health and physical fitness. Joe became a certified trainer and conditioning coach in 2016 to inspire others to achieve their goals while helping individuals make positive changes. … Over the years, Joe has developed knowledge and had the opportunity to work with boxers of varying experience and skill levels.”
The 38-year-old Trubilla’s qualifications as a boxing coach, however, appear slim. There’s no indication he was previously employed in the sport. He has been a competitive bodybuilder, but in 2021 received a lifetime suspension from competition by the United States Bodybuilding Federation after testing positive for Drostanolone, a banned anabolic steroid and estrogen-blocker popular among bodybuilders, as well as several other banned substances.
While use of illegal drugs, including steroids, is a potential disqualifier for sheriff’s office job applicants, contract employees like Trubilla aren’t required to go through the agency’s rigorous pre-employment process. Ironically, Sheriff Marceno admitted while applying for a deputy position at the Collier County Sheriff’s Office in 2002 that he had used illegal steroids in the past. As first reported by FOX 4 in 2019, he was hired despite a recommendation his application be rejected.
On the LCSO webpage, Trubilla boasts boxing coach certification — which entails passing two online tests and a background check — from USA Boxing.
According to that organization, which regulates amateur boxing, Trubilla first received the certification in November 2022, just a month before he signed the LCSO contract and after he already popped up on the agency’s payroll. During a phone inquiry by the Trident, a representative from USA Boxing further stated that Trubilla’s certification lapsed in early 2024 and had not been renewed.
Questions from the Trident emailed to LCSO’s public affairs department regarding Trubilla’s work history and alleged steroid use went unanswered.
Sheriff’s contracts are under investigation
While relatives can work at the same public agency in Florida, state ethics law forbids public officials from taking part in hiring relatives or advocating for them in any way. Caroline Klancke, executive director of the nonprofit Florida Ethics Institute, told the Trident last month that the hiring of Holloway’s wife was “ripe” for investigation by the state’s Florida Commission on Ethics.
The sheriff’s office has been mired in scandal for months following revelations about another of its consulting contracts. Sheriff Marceno is under an open federal investigation following allegations of money laundering and misappropriation of funds, first reported by the Trident in September, involving an LCSO contract with Bonita Springs jeweler Ken Romano, one of the sheriff’s former gambling buddies. Romano alleged Marceno gave him a no-work $5,700-a-month contract that involved kickbacks to the sheriff’s now deceased father for payments on a Mercedes Benz.
Ben Wilcox, research director for non-profit government watchdog Integrity Florida, said the hiring of the undersheriff’s son-in-law only compounds the need for official scrutiny of the undersheriff’s family hirings.
“I think it’s highly questionable,” Wilcox said. “It looks like they’re employing people not based on their qualifications but their family connections. It has the appearance of nepotism and cries out for an ethics investigation.”
About the Author: Trident senior editor Bob Norman is an award-winning journalist who has investigated crime and corruption in the state for three decades. 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.