Editor's note: Warning — story contains raw and vulgar language and descriptions of situations.
When Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno won the Republican primary on Aug. 18, 2020, he celebrated in a Bonita Springs hotel suite, where close colleagues and friends stood in a circle around the room as he addressed each one.
Among those in the circle were fellow sheriff’s office employees like Capt. Chris Lalor, whom he called “heaven sent,” and John Holloway, who would later become his undersheriff and whom he dubbed the “brains of the operation.” But saved for the end was someone Marceno said came from “a different place,” his closest friend, 56-year-old Ken Romano, a Bronx and New Jersey-raised jeweler with both the look and voice of a backroom character on The Sopranos.
“Everybody needs a Kenny,” Marceno says to laughter in the room. “You don’t need guns, you need a Kenny. Kenny is Gianni Versace meets John Gotti. But let me tell you something, Kenny has been the most loyal friend. If I need Kenny at four in the morning, Kenny is there at 4:01.”
Filming the speech was Romano himself. The two men often shared photos and videos of each other — Marceno in particular would send selfies to Romano at odd times, while he was at the gym, after waking in the morning. It now amounts to a trove of material the sheriff surely never expected to see the light of day.
In the hotel suite, Marceno described Romano as his staunchest defender and protector. The two men, who shared a thirst for casino gambling and fast and very expensive sports cars, were virtually inseparable.
“A lot of people do things behind the scenes,” Marceno says in the video, which was shot by Romano. “Well, Kenny is the guy who proudly attacks people who attack me, signs his name, puts his address, says please come get him, ‘let’s go champ.’”
Just four years later, Romano was on the attack against Marceno in a high-stakes public war that has threatened Marceno’s political career.
As first reported by the Florida Trident, the jeweler last year alleged to the FBI that Marceno involved him in a kickback scheme, sparking a federal investigation. The sheriff had provided Romano a $5,700-per-month consulting contract with LCSO, courtesy of the taxpayers. Romano said it was essentially a no-show job.
Marceno, according to Romano, instructed him to pay $1,700 a month from his LCSO check directly to the sheriff’s father, Carmine Marceno Sr. The money, Romano said, was for monthly payments on a white Mercedes Benz the sheriff had purchased for his since-deceased dad.
“[E]very month I would just give his father the money,” Romano recounted in an audio recording made at the time. “I would take cash, I would throw it on top of the medicine cabinet and [Marceno Sr.] would come in and take it. Like, it was secretive, you know?”
He further claimed he bailed Marceno out of heavy gambling losses and gave him expensive gifts totalling roughly a quarter million dollars over the years, all of it unreported as required under Florida law.
He brought receipts, some of them literal. Romano released security video from his Bonita Springs jewelry store of Marceno accepting an unexplained stack of cash from him. Another video showed Marceno’s grandmother thanking “Kenny” on video for two diamond rings purportedly worth more than $40,000. And there was a receipt for a $9,000 grand piano Romano purchased for Marceno in May 2020.
Sources close to the FBI investigation said federal agents recorded multiple incriminating phone calls between the two men regarding the alleged kickback scheme and other wrongdoing involving work done by LCSO-related contractors at the sheriff’s home. As part of the sting, Romano asked the sheriff to reinstate his LCSO contract; sheriff’s office records show he was in the process of being hired again before the explosive allegations went public.
Amid great public buzz around the investigation late last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office convened a federal grand jury to investigate and potentially indict Marceno. Throughout the saga, the sheriff remained publicly silent, issuing only a written statement blanketly claiming the allegations were politically motivated and untrue. To this day, he’s never answered questions about the case from the media.
Then, early this year, as public anticipation of federal action hit a fever pitch, the case suddenly went as quiet as Marceno had been.
The corruption case is shut down
Coinciding with the silence were changes in leadership at the U.S. Attorney’s Office following the election of President Donald Trump. In February, U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg was forced out of his position by Trump, who just a month prior had begun his second term in the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed longtime federal attorney Greg Kehoe in Handberg’s place.
As the silence became more deafening, Marceno appealed directly to Trump (“I love Trump,” the sheriff said) while floating the idea of running for Congress in March. His closest supporters began touting Marceno as “Trump’s sheriff.” Romano, meanwhile, voiced concerns that trash titan Anthony Lomangino, a close ally of the sheriff who also happens to be one of Trump’s largest individual donors, was going to bat for the sheriff to kill the case. Others worried about potential political ties to Bondi and Sen. Rick Scott, who appointed Marceno to the sheriff’s post back in 2018.
On Nov. 17, the sheriff’s Naples-based attorney, Donald Day, received a letter from the Middle District informing him the criminal case against Marceno had been closed. Day claimed to media outlets, including the Trident, that Marceno had been “cleared” of wrongdoing, but a screen grab of the close-out letter he shared publicly said only it had been closed and specifically left the door open to re-open the case.
Omitted from the screenshot was the name of the person who signed the letter. When contacted for an explanation, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman William Daniels referred all questions back to private attorney Day.
What is clear is that the feds spent months investigating a case it believed had merit and federal prosecutors convened a grand jury to determine whether Marceno should be indicted – before the case was shut down under murky circumstances.
As the case languished, an increasingly frustrated Romano created a TikTok page where he shared several candid videos and audio recordings of Marceno, many of them made while the two men were still pals. Some of them are mysterious in their origin and several were obtained independently by the Trident.
All of them paint an unflattering – and at times disturbing – portrait of the sheriff.
Gambling … and losing
In two of the videos Marceno can be seen intensely playing on a slot machine in an unspecified casino.
“Piece of f–king shit,” the sheriff says after a losing spin. “That was six thousand [lost].”
In another video he lets out a string of profanities when he again loses on the slots, before he appears to win $279 in bonus play.
Marceno’s gambling habit isn’t a secret. He disclosed nearly half a million dollars in earnings from the Seminole Hard Rock over a period of two years – equaling more than his public salary at the time.
When the Trident broke that story in 2023, Undersheriff John Holloway claimed Marceno gambled only low stakes amounts and had developed a love of slot machines from his grandmother, Nan. Romano however claimed the sheriff played very high stakes – and posted the video in which the sheriff apparently lost $6,000 as evidence.
Romano alleged he covered tens of thousands of dollars in gambling losses for the sheriff over the years, while also providing lavish gifts to both the sheriff and his grandmother.
In one video shared by Romano, Nan reclines in a hospital bed and talks with a family member about gifts she’s been given by Romano. It’s not clear who is behind the camera.
“What did he give you?” a woman not seen in the video asks Nan.
“One diamond five carats,” Nan answers while looking down at the ring on her finger. “And then he gave me a diamond with rubies in it, a Jaqueline Kennedy ring.”
In the video, someone then asks Nan, who died in 2021 and was the inspiration for LCSO’s animal rescue shelter “Nan’s Ranch,” who gave her the rings. There is no hesitation in her answer.
“Kenny,” she says.
Wishing death for a former LCSO commander
A common theme in the recordings is Marceno’s rampant vulgarity. In one of the more disturbing recordings, Marceno can be heard insulting former Lee sheriff’s commander-turned-whistle blower James Bogliole.
In the audio posted by Romano, Marceno lambastes Bogliole in incredibly crass fashion, even voicing a death wish for the former NYPD officer and U.S. Army veteran.
“He’s f–king the worst cop I have in the entire f–king agency … I hope he dies in his sleep, the m—-f—-,” Marceno can be heard saying. “… I have his ass, so I don’t give a flying f–k. He can suck my d–k and f–kin’ blow a load in his face.”
Bogliole has alleged he was pressured to lie about a case involving another former deputy, Michael Soto. The former commander claimed that when Soto was pulled over on suspicion of DUI in 2023, he informed higher-ups the deputy was belligerent and reeked of alcohol. But instead of being taken to jail, Soto was given a ride home. Bogliole later alleged Undersheriff Holloway wrote a false report claiming Soto was “ill, and not impaired,” and that he signed it “under duress.”
When and where the audio of Marceno railing against Bogliole was captured isn’t known. After the Trident reached out to the sheriff about it, attorney Day claimed some of the recordings posted by Romano were illegally made under Florida law, which requires both parties to agree to being recorded during private conversations.
“There have been recordings made of the sheriff unbeknownst to the sheriff,” said Day. “We have asked law enforcement to investigate those recordings. It would also be a felony to publish recordings that are made unlawfully. I’d ask you to be careful with that.”
He didn’t answer further questions. A detailed request for an interview with the sheriff regarding Romano and the recordings was met with silence.
“Everybody be naked”
The biggest scandal Marceno endured prior to the scuttled federal investigation regarded a woman named Deanna Williams, whom he met in 2018 after she reported a crime.
Marceno pursued Williams romantically and when she became pregnant he pressured her to have an abortion – which runs in contradiction to the staunchly conservative beliefs he espouses as a Republican politician.
Multiple sources previously close with Marceno say womanizing is as glaring a vice for the sheriff as gambling. And the Romano recordings appear to further substantiate that claim.
In one video taken by Romano, the unmarried Marceno talks of having girls at his home.
“F–king girls in here drinking, it’s over,” he says to Romano. “I put the f–king pool at 90, the jacuzzi on 105, everybody be naked, jerking each other off, I f–king don’t give a f–k. I shut these blinds, you can knock all you want motherf–ker. The gates are locked, unless you jump that f–king fence you can’t come in.”
In another audio recording, he can be heard talking about Ivanka Trump, who visited the sheriff’s office in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. “She’s a different level, buddy,” he says of the president’s daughter. “Clean f–king beautiful upscale Manhattan p—y.”
In another audio, he has a very different take on Casey DeSantis, Florida’s First Lady.
“She’s disgusting,” he says. “Rough, rough, rough. Her nails are f—ed up. Rough. Like rough. I’m telling you.”
He says he thinks there’s “something wrong” mentally with her husband, Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he deems a “f—ing Down Syndrome asshole” in one of the recordings.
Marceno is also fond of high-end sports cars, including Ferraris and Lamborghinis, both of which he’s owned. While Marceno claims “zero tolerance” for those who break street racing laws, Romano videoed the sheriff gunning a Lamborghini and speeding, in apparent violation of those laws himself.
“The community deserves transparency”
Dozens of Lee County residents expressed their shock and dissatisfaction with the decision to shut down the federal grand jury investigation on the Facebook page “Lee County Florida Corruption,” which has nearly 7,000 followers.
“Here in Lee County, we’re expected to accept corruption as normal,” wrote resident Bill Esposito in one comment. “The community deserves transparency, not intimidation. We deserve leadership, not control. And nothing changes until we demand it together.”
“Of course the case is closed,” wrote another. “Marceno is so far up Trump’s a– that he uses Trump’s transverse colon as a hammock.”
Numerous media outlets echoed Day’s claim that the feds had “cleared” Marceno, but the letter clearly left the door open for further investigation.
“This letter does not bind any federal, state or local law enforcement or prosecuting authority, including this office, nor does it address or limit any civil or administrative action that a federal, state, or local authority may pursue with respect to this or any other matter,” the letter concluded.
Romano had publicly said he would never stop trying to bring Marceno to justice, but he’s gone quiet since the federal case was shut down, even deactivating his once-popular TikTok page. Multiple attempts by the Trident to interview him for this article were unsuccessful.
Marceno, after months of near-dormancy, has been raising his profile since the case was closed. In recent days he’s appeared at a press conference with State Attorney Amira Fox, a close political ally, staged multiple media events, and recently played a central role in the Coconut Pointe holiday parade and annual LCSO Christmas picnic.
While the sheriff’s future political plans are unknown, a federal PAC called American Heritage has gone live with a “Draft Carmine Marceno for Congress” webpage and blasted out texts to some area registered Republicans urging them to sign a petition to that effect.
While no chairperson for American Heritage is listed on the Federal Election Commission website, the PAC’s treasurer is Melissa Power, wife of Florida Republican Party chairman Evan Power. While Melissa Power didn’t respond to a request for comment, Evan Power noted his wife is an experienced campaign treasurer and said he knew nothing about the PAC, which was formed in June.
“The would be the first I heard about it,” he wrote in an email. “I’m not involved at all.”
When asked about a potential run for Congress, Power maintained neutrality in any potential primary. Marceno himself has publicly denied any involvement with the effort by the Tallahassee-based PAC, which has yet to disclose any donors on the FEC website and touts a commitment to “faith, family, and free enterprise.”
“Sheriff Carmine Marceno has earned the trust of Southwest Florida,” claims the group, adding that the Congressional district “deserves a leader who understands our values and knows how to deliver.”
About the author: Trident senior editor Bob Norman is a veteran investigative journalist whose work has won dozens of awards and led to the removal of multiple 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.
