A Florida Sheriff Took $65,000 From an Opioid Training Company, Then Pitched Its Course to the State

The sheriff wore a blue business suit instead of a uniform, and he introduced himself the way a vendor would. Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony told Florida's Statewide Council on Opioid Abatement that he had spent months touring the state, meeting police chiefs, detention directors and EMS executives, and that they had signed on to take a four-hour online course on opioid crisis response. Then he asked the council to put $3 million of opioid settlement money behind a pilot so the state could, in his words, "be the group that says here's the validation."

What he did not say, according to video of the March 31 meeting and a spokesman for the council's delegated chair, is that the company selling that course had paid him $65,000.

The payment is on Tony's 2025 financial disclosure form, filed with the state as required of elected officials. It lists Opioid Training Institute LLC as the source of $65,000 in income — a figure equal to about a fifth of the $293,784 salary he drew as sheriff that year. Florida Bulldog's Dan Christensen reported the disclosure and the juxtaposition on Nov. 1; independent journalist T. Chaz Stevens published the underlying documents and confirmed the timeline in a separate account the same day.

There is a detail in that timeline that matters more than it first appears. The Form 6 disclosure covering 2025 was not due until July 1, 2026. On the day Tony stood in front of the council and pitched the course, the state's public record contained no link between the sheriff and the company he was promoting.

What the council was asked to buy

The Statewide Council on Opioid Abatement sits inside the Department of Children and Families and advises the governor and Legislature on how to spend Florida's share of the national opioid settlements. Its formal duties include developing "metrics, measures, or datasets to assess the progress and success of programs" paid for with settlement dollars — the body exists, in statute, to keep score.

Tony presented alongside Rony Shir, an associate dean for executive education at the University of Miami's business school. Their slide deck was titled "The Opioid Crisis: Positioning Florida as a National Leader in Training and Preparedness." The program they described, "Operational Readiness: Opioid Use Disorder Crisis Training for First Responders," is marketed jointly by the university and Zschool, a Fort Lauderdale online program management company, at $450 a seat for four hours of online instruction.

Shir told the council the pilot price would be cut to $200 per participant. "The reason for this is the pilot allows us to measure the impact, to gather the feedback, to refine the program before we would consider a broader expansion," he said. Tony framed the ask around reach: nearly 26,000 first responders across Florida had been unable to take the course, he said, because "the funding hasn't been available." He also floated a civilian version, reasoning that someone other than a first responder often dials 911.

A pilot that produces a favorable evaluation is worth more to a vendor than the pilot revenue. The council's recommendations shape what the Legislature funds and how agencies write solicitations, and competitors exist — Lexipol and Elite Response Training both sell training platforms into the same public-safety market. Council agendas published since March 31 contain no mention of any action on the proposal. The council meets again Nov. 4.

The pool of money the brochure points at

Florida's share of the national settlements comes to roughly $3.52 billion paid over about 18 years, out of a nationwide total near $50 billion involving manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy chains. The council's 2025 annual report lists $145.8 million in opioid settlement spending for fiscal 2024-25, spread across recovery housing, peer support and recovery community organizations, opioid data management, expansion of the Coordinated Opioid Recovery network, and more than 767,000 naloxone kits.

That is the context in which a $3 million training pilot is not a large number. It is also the reason settlement funds draw vendors: the money is committed, it is outside the ordinary appropriations queue, and in many states it can be spent on "training" without a competitive procurement. Opioid Training Solutions, the sales brand OTI operates under, says so in its own brochure for police and fire agencies: "Contact us to learn how your training can be 100% fully funded by your State's Opioid Settlement Funds."

Stevens, who writes a subscriber-funded accountability newsletter in Florida, noticed the phrasing. He has asked the FTC whether it has reviewed that brochure against a 2010 order that permanently bars the company's principal from making false claims about anything he sells.

Who is behind Opioid Training Institute

Florida corporate records list J. Henry Scott as OTI LLC's sole manager and registered agent, with an office in Boca Raton. Scott confirmed to Florida Bulldog that OTI is "part of Zschool, a division. It's a big company." Zschool was founded by Jordan Zimmerman, the South Florida advertising executive behind what his own biography calls a "$4 billion advertising empire," and it markets executive education with partners it says include more than 25 universities. In Broward County election records, Zimmerman contributed $25,000 in July 2020 to Broward First, a now-defunct political committee supporting Tony; Zimmerman's son gave $5,000 the day before.

Asked what the $65,000 bought, Scott told the Bulldog: "I guess that's how he was getting compensated for both his time as a board member and any consulting he did to help, you know, craft classes." He said Tony no longer consults for the company but did not say when that stopped. Tony's office did not answer questions about the work. Shir did not respond to detailed questions, and a University of Miami business school spokeswoman said he was out of the office.

The name on the 2010 order

Until 2011, J. Henry Scott was Scott Pasch. In March 2010 he and a partner settled a Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department case against their New Jersey telemarketing company, Civic Development Group, for $18.8 million — then the largest civil penalty in an FTC consumer protection case. The complaint alleged that callers told donors 100 percent of their gift went to the charity named, that the charities were police, firefighter and veterans groups, and that in fact those organizations received 10 to 15 percent. The settlement permanently banned the defendants from telemarketing and from soliciting charitable donations, and required Pasch to surrender a $2 million house, a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a guitar collection and three Mercedes, among other assets. The stipulated order did not constitute an admission of liability.

Thirteen months later, a legal notice in a Somerville, New Jersey newspaper announced that Scott Pasch had applied to change his name to J. Henry Scott. He told the Bulldog the change had nothing to do with the FTC action. New Jersey has sealed name-change records since 2021, so the reasoning behind the approval is not public. The 2010 order does not prohibit him from selling training to police departments. It does prohibit false claims about what he sells.

The story was notable enough to become a 2023 HBO documentary miniseries, "Telemarketer$."

Five states, one sales pitch

Lobbying registrations filed under the names Opioid Training Institute, Opioid Training Solutions and Zschools appear in Florida, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina and Maryland, all listing either Zschool's Fort Lauderdale address or OTI's Boca Raton office, with Scott named as corporate authorizer on the North Carolina and Maryland filings. A Zschool job posting for an online "advisory board consultant" describes the role in terms that map closely onto what Tony told the council he had been doing: consultants serve as "trusted advocates," "driving participation in training programs," representing the company "within the law enforcement community," and helping departments "move from interest to engagement."

Whether that constitutes lobbying for compensation — the specific act Florida's Constitution forbids a sitting public officer from performing before a state body — is now a question for the Florida Commission on Ethics. Stevens filed a complaint asking the commission to examine the March 31 appearance and to subpoena the consulting contract he has not been able to obtain. Separately, council minutes from October 2025 record the delegated chair, Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma, telling members that Tony had said BSO "launched a training course focused on opioid use disorder and crisis intervention specifically for first responders."

The evaluation the pilot was not designed to produce

The council's statutory job is to develop metrics that can tell a working program from a well-marketed one, and the proposal it heard was thinner on that front than on price. Nothing in the public record describes a baseline, a comparison group, or an outcome beyond completion — whether first responders who take the course distribute more naloxone, make more referrals, or change how they handle a person in withdrawal on a sidewalk. A four-hour module can measure knowledge. The thing the council is supposed to buy is behavior, and the two are not the same, which is why the discounted pilot price was also the cheapest moment for someone to insist on the harder measurement.

What the record does and does not show

No public document establishes that the council acted on the pilot request, that Tony received anything for the March 31 appearance itself, or that the university knew about the payments to him. The ethics complaint is an allegation, not a finding, and the FTC has not said whether it is examining the brochure. Tony has denied impropriety in a separate and increasingly bitter budget dispute with Broward County commissioners, who moved in September to take back control of fire-rescue services when the county's contract with the sheriff's office expires in 2028.

What the record does show is a structural feature of the settlement era rather than a single bad actor. Settlement dollars arrive as a fixed, multi-year stream that state agencies must allocate, and the vendors who understand that stream show up at the advisory meetings where priorities get set. The council's own annual report is a list of what that money bought: naloxone, recovery housing, peer support, data systems. A $3 million pilot buys roughly 15,000 training seats at the discounted $200 rate, or about 6,600 at list price — enough to train a meaningful share of the state's first responders, and a rounding error against a $3.52 billion share.

For families trying to find opioid addiction treatment, none of this changes what works: medication for opioid use disorder, naloxone in the hands of people likely to witness an overdose, and follow-up after an emergency visit. It does change who gets to bill the state for teaching it. The council's next meeting is Nov. 4, and the metrics duty in its own statute is the reason the March 31 presentation is worth reading closely: a body that exists to measure outcomes should be able to say, on the record, who paid the man making the pitch.