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Given how comically sloppy Greenberg was, I doubt he would have escaped investigation and discovery for long. Part of the reason his primary opponent ran was because of rumors spreading about the naughty behavior and fed investigation.
Gaetz wasn't the only one who was implicated by our Icarus as he was plummeting back to Earth. Greenberg sang like a bird about at least multiple people he had been paying 17 year olds to sleep with and not just Gaetz. If one were to set-up a honeypot, you would do it like Greenberg minus the sloppiness. It's like this dude watched a movie and thought, "I can do that!" You recruit girls, you give them real fraudulent IDs, you pay them to attend parties, you invite rich or otherwise powerful men and/or their progeny, you pay the girls to sleep with them, and then you use then you go with the, "oh no, I have something horrible I have to tell you but we can deal with this together" conversation afterwards. The rich and connected men pay Greenberg for the "party" with a wink wink knowing the girls were brought to sleep with them. And that's exactly what he did, except the problem was Gaetz refused to play ball because he claimed none of it was true.
Greenberg wasn't only caught dead-to-rights sex trafficking, he was also caught in dozens of millions of dollars embezzlement, hiring his groomsmen for multiple million dollar "consulting" fees, millions of dollars real estate scam, and more. This guy wasn't looking at 10 years, he was looking at dozens of years. And so when caught, he sang like a bird, his case was delayed for years and then he plead out and got 1 year above the mandatory minimum sentence on sex trafficking a minor as the federal government rushed to tie off the loose ends.
And the evidence against Gaetz is bad; the reason the women witnesses against him had credibility issues is rumored to be that they were caught lying with some of the details they claimed happened and which Gaetz can prove were lies. And that's why parts of the witness statements were leaked (sorry, I mean "hacked" and given to the media) but not the conclusions of the House or DOJ because that is rumored to be in them. It's also the reason why they won't be released (not to mention, Gaetz doesn't want them to be released because they contain true embarrassing information as well as the damage has already been done). It turns out there is evidence Gaetz was one of the people Greenberg didn't succeed in honey-potting and it explains why he refused to cower and dared the DOJ or House to do something about it, not to mention naming a powerful Florida lawyer and former DOJ prosecutor on national TV and accusing him of attempting to extort his family. If Gaetz was lying, why didn't this powerful lawyer threaten and then sue him with defamation? We can speculate, but you sure as shit do not do that unless you have at least some of the goods. And judging by how the Gaetz handled themselves once being extorted and the documents they smartly kept (and obtained from the FBI), we know the Gaetz are not sloppy.
I haven't seen anything connecting Greenberg to our three musketeers McGee, Kent, and Alford, although I wonder if someone spent the time to find Greenberg's other victims you may discover they were also targets of our three opportunists. Maybe they were also directed to pay $5m to $25m to a company set up by McGee for Stephen Alford. Doesn't every partner at a prestigious lawfirm keep in his close orbit a man convicted multiple times of felonies for fraud and extortion and help him set-up his schemes by incorporating his intermediary companies?
If it was as simple as Gaetz and Greenberg just love banging out 17 year old prosties together, I don't think this is how it would play out. Frankly, I think Gaetz has far more credibility than the other actors in the story and has produced evidence to support things he says, e.g., his contemporaneous unhinged interview on Tucker Carlson which came out to be completely supported over a year later. He may be saying lies which he knows cannot be disproved or is betting they won't be disproved, but it takes a special amount of gusto to lie this much about powerful people on national tv to do so.
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