Jim Greer, the disgraced former chairman of the Florida GOP, is now selling La-Z-Boy recliners for $8 an hour plus commission at an Orlando-area furniture store as part of a prison work release program.
Greer, 51, still has seven months left on his prison sentence for stealing $125,000 from the state GOP.
His fall from power in 2010 was spectacular – from big-spending Tallahassee political power broker to indicted and now convicted criminal.
He pleaded guilty to four counts of theft and one count of money laundering in an Orlando courtroom last year and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
But instead of behind bars, he’s now assigned to an Orlando work release facility on Mercy Drive. It has no bars and no prison-like security, although, it is fenced.
He was transferred there — a privately-run facility called Bridges of Orlando — Oct. 29. Before that, he was assigned to a Florida Department of Corrections work camp in the Florida Panhandle.
He told the Tampa Bay Times, in an interview published Sept. 6, that while at that camp – Gulf Forestry Camp – he worked six-hour days pulling weeds and picking up trash.
Now, his routine is different.
The Department of Corrections would give few specifics about his life now, except that he lives and sleeps at the center and has worked at a La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries store since Nov. 18.
There are four in the Orlando area.
Click here for the story in the Orlando Sentinel
