With Putnam leading the GOP primary field in the 2018 Florida governor’s race, the 43-year-old faces increased scrutiny of his current office. | Mark Wallheiser/AP Photo Documents: Putnam office staffers admitted inappropriate, sexually charged behavior

TALLAHASSEE — Within a one-year period, beginning in early 2015, three staffers in Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam’s office admitted to sexual harassment and watching pornography on a work computer, as documented in state investigations conducted by the department’s own inspector general.

Two of the incidents were grocery store inspectors who work for Putnam’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services; each made inappropriate comments to non-department female staff who worked at grocery stores. A third staffer was a fruit and vegetable inspector who used his state computer to view pornography more than 1,000 times, including searches involving state Attorney General Pam Bondi, who serves with Putnam on the Florida Cabinet. The department findings had not been previously reported.


In all three cases, which are detailed in separate inspector general reports, Putnam, who is now a Republican candidate for governor, carried out some form of punishment. Two of the employees are still with the department, which has about 3,650 employees, while the third left for unrelated reasons.

“Clearly the existence of inspector general reports indicates that the department takes allegations like these seriously,” said Jenn Meale, a department spokeswoman. “The allegations were investigated, and based on the findings of the investigations, personnel actions were taken. Given that these are human resource matters, we are not at liberty to discuss additional details.”

With Putnam leading the GOP primary field in the 2018 Florida governor’s race, the 43-year-old faces increased scrutiny of his current office, to which he was elected and has held since 2010. Putnam last year called for then-state Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican, to resign after POLITICO reported his history of sexual harassing women. Amid widespread pressure, Latvala resigned in December.

A separate 2017 inspector general’s document reported by the Tampa Bay Times earlier this month outlined 291 concealed carry permits being revoked after being approved without full background checks. The employee responsible was fired.

POLITICO is not identifying the women named in the 2015 reports because they are victims of sexual harassment. They could not be reached for comment.

The first incident was put on the department’s radar in March 2015 when the inspector general’s office was flagged to inappropriate computer usage by William Copeland, who had been with the department for 49 years and was stationed in the department’s Jacksonville Division of Fruit and Vegetables office.

Investigators monitored his internet usage for two months and found he “accessed numerous websites containing scantily clad women, nudity and pornographic material.” The inspector general report noted 1,300 “transactions” identified as pornographic, including searches involving Bondi; Casey Anthony, an Orlando woman acquitted in 2013 of charges related to killing her 2-year-old daughter; and Chelsea Manning, a former Army soldier convicted on charges related to disclosing more than 700,000 documents, some of which were classified, to the website WikiLeaks. Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, is a transgender woman.

“Copeland admitted to viewing images and videos of adult pornography from his state-owned computer,” read the report, which was finalized in August 2015.

After the report was sent to top department officials, including Putnam, Copeland was given a five-day suspension without pay. He is no longer with the department.

The second incident stemmed from a June 2015 complaint filed by a female employee at Rosita’s Meat Market in Lake Park. During a visit to the store, Mark Ryan, an inspector in the department’s Division of Food Safety, made inappropriate comments, including asking to see the female employee in just her apron.

“He basically asked to see me naked,” she wrote in her complaint. “I immediately asked him … and I quote “Excuse me, just the apron?” and he replied with “yeah, just the apron” [I was in complete shock and frankly, pure disgust.]”

When he returned the following month, the owner of the store told him the employee was “upset,” which prompted Ryan to approach the female employee “on bended knee, sweating profusely begging and groveling asking for my forgiveness, in front of customers, embarrassing me yet again as they were staring," she wrote in her complaint.

“I truly believe had the owner not said anything, Inspector Mark Ryan wouldn’t have given it a second thought,” read the complaint.

Ryan told investigators that the owner was not present that day, but that his brother, Norman Mansour, was managing the store. At one point, Ryan said, Mansour — whom he has known for “many years” — noted that the female employee was wearing a low-cut blouse, which he took as a signal that he could make sexually charged comments.

“I thought while he’s bringing me into this sort of risqué conversation, that it was ok,” Ryan said, according to an inspector general’s report. “So yeah, maybe I was tugged a bit, and I regretted it. Absolutely. Absolutely.”

In September 2015, Ryan received a 10-day suspension without pay. He remains employed with the department.

The final incident outlined in inspector general reports involved two women who worked at a Whole Foods store in Coral Gables. Department inspector Moises Miguez, who then worked as a sanitation and safety specialist, told the two that they could be models on the television show “Suicide Girls.”

He told the women that the Suicide Girls “model naked and how he would watch the show on television,” then told them that “he likes when a girl is confident … it’s sexy,” and that he “could tell that underneath my work uniform I have the body to be a Suicide Girl.”

Miguez told investigators he “inadvertently” watched the show “Suicide Girls“ “but quickly realized the subject matter was not what he had first expected when the show portrayed artistic, alternative looking females modeling in the nude,” according to the complaint. He said he spoke to the women about the show, but denied suggesting they should be Suicide Girls.

He “never mentioned our jobs or food safety once,” a complaint with the department read.

He said he could not remember if he asked about their bodies, but said it was a possibility he asked the women if they had “taken any sexy photos,” and that they should not keep their cellphones in their back pockets because “men like to look at that area.”

“I don’t know why I said that. … I don’t have no answer to that,” he told investigators.

After the incident, Whole Foods asked that Miguez be accompanied by another department employee when coming to the store because store managers did not want him alone with staff.

He received a written reprimand in February 2016 and remains employed with the department.