'Mike Miller': Developer or FBI agent?

Jeff Burlew
Tallahassee Democrat
The FBI logo is seen outside the headquarters building in Washington, DC on July 5, 2016.

Just who is — or was — Mike Miller?

A developer from Nashville, looking to drum up business for his firm, Southern Pines Development?

Or a concoction of the FBI, an undercover agent dispatched to Tallahassee to investigate public corruption? 

Miller made the rounds in Tallahassee last year, meeting with high-profile people including Leon County Administrator Vince Long, County Commissioner Kristin Dozier and then-City Commission candidate Rick Minor. 

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The meetings were arranged by Adam Corey, an owner of the city-backed Edison restaurant, and Nick Lowe, a former Tallahassee police officer who served as vice president for Corey’s lobbying firm, Unconventional Strategies. Lowe exited Corey's firm a few weeks ago, around the same time the city was hit with federal subpoenas seeking information about Corey and other local developers and their companies.

Miller was introduced as a developer from Nashville, representing a company called Southern Pines Development. On occasion, he was accompanied by one or two others, purported at the time to be his business partners. 

But neither Miller nor his cohorts have been seen or heard from over recent months by the very people they were so eager to meet with last year.

There’s virtually no trace of his time in Tallahassee. He didn’t leave behind business cards or contact numbers. His name appears on a Facebook invite for a fundraiser for Minor’s campaign, but Minor barely remembers him.

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Sources that would provide information only on the condition of anonymity say there’s a simple explanation for that: There was no Mike Miller, developer from Nashville. The man introduced as such and his two associates were actually working undercover for the FBI, gathering information as they hobnobbed with Tallahassee's elite.

“These were the guys posing as developers,” said an attorney representing a person of interest in the FBI's investigation of local redevelopment deals. “I don’t think there’s any question.” 

The FBI investigation came to light after the agency delivered subpoenas June 14 to the city and the Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency. The subpoenas demanded records involving eight Tallahassee business people and more than a dozen of their firms. Those named include Corey, a former campaign treasurer for Mayor Andrew Gillum, who’s running for Florida governor. Also named was Paige Carter-Smith, executive director of the Downtown Improvement Authority and a close friend and former chief of staff to City Commissioner Scott Maddox.

Corey did not return requests for comment about Miller. Lowe, who served as a TPD officer for five years, declined to comment.

When the Democrat asked Gillum aide Jamie Van Pelt about Mike Miller, he said the mayor would have no further comment on the FBI investigation.

In a Florida Bar News article earlier this month, FBI Special Agent Joshua Doyle, the Bar's incoming executive director, discussed a recently concluded two-year investigation that involved undercover personnel and vehicles and an airplane.

Mike Miller is a common name. More than a half million references to “Mike Miller” come up in a simple Google search. More than 20 Mike Millers are listed as residing in and around Nashville.

But Southern Pines developer Mike Miller doesn't appear in any past article of The Tennessean, Nashville's newspaper of record. According to Tennessee business records, there’s no indication a company called Southern Pines Development ever existed in the state.

Long said he and Deputy County Administrator Alan Rosenzweig met with Miller and one or two others in a county conference room on June 21, 2016. The only record Long has of the encounter is a calendar item that says the meeting was with “prospective developers” and was requested by Corey and Lowe.

“My recollection is pretty vague,” Long said. “But generally I do recall meeting with several people who were introduced to me as prospective developers on South Monroe Street. Nothing about the meeting stood out to me as being out of the ordinary or unusual in any way.”

He said the developers expressed interest in redeveloping several properties along South Monroe Street, some of which were already located in the Frenchtown/south side CRA and others just outside it. There was talk about expanding the boundaries of the CRA, something the agency was already set to discuss in a couple of days.

Long said he thanked them for their interest in seeking out redevelopment opportunities and referred them to CRA staff. He said he can’t remember whether both Corey and Lowe were there or just one or the other.

“I think we generally discussed that the CRA was considering boundary adjustments, that that was an issue that the CRA happened to be engaged in at the time,” Long said. “And I again referred them to the CRA staff to see if there was any potential for their property to be considered in that evaluation.”

Dozier said she met with Miller and Lowe, also on June 21, in her office after Lowe emailed the commissioner’s aide asking for a brief introduction. Dozier had little recollection of the meeting until she was contacted by the Democrat earlier this week and reviewed her records.

She said she has a calendar note that reads, “Nick Lowe with Mike Miller of Southern Pines Development.” She said she and her aide typically record contact information from business cards handed out at such meetings. But she has no contact information for Miller.

“It was not an unusual meeting,” she said. “Constituents often ask for meetings on specific issues, or we will have introductions to people who are new to the community or looking to do business and that was my impression of the meeting.”

After speaking with Long about Miller, she recalled that Miller discussed properties on the east side of South Monroe Street and expansion of the CRA, which at the time ended on the west side of the street. Though she doesn’t remember exactly, she said she normally would have directed someone like Miller to speak with staff.

“The only thing we did to follow up on this meeting was send Mr. Lowe a copy of the agenda” for a meeting of the CRA set for two days later, on June 23, 2016. The CRA did vote unanimously to expand the CRA during that meeting, but the move had been in the works for some time. Dozier said she never heard from Miller again.

More recently, a city communications employee, Eddie Kring, was said to be trying to track down a photo of the elusive Miller. Kring, who used to work for Corey’s Tallahassee Hospitality Group, didn’t return phone calls. 

City spokeswoman Alison Faris, who is Kring's boss, said he told her any inquiries he may have been making about Miller were personal and were not related to city business. Kring said he was not comfortable talking to the media about it, Faris told the Democrat.

Traces of Miller can be found elsewhere. 

He was listed with about 30 others as co-host of a fundraiser for Minor’s City Commission campaign, held May 11, 2016, at Corey’s condominium on All Saints Street. Corey, Lowe and Jason Bruner, then chef of Corey’s now-defunct 101 restaurant, served as the main hosts.

Minor has only a hazy recollection of Miller. And he didn’t recall meeting him at all until he was contacted by the Democrat, which prompted him to reach out to Lowe, who helped put together the host list. 

Lowe reminded Minor that the two of them met with Miller and his business partner over coffee at The Edison restaurant’s Power Plant cafe. Minor said he recalls Miller discussing interest in building student housing near the Palmer Munroe teen center. Minor is not sure when the meeting occurred, though he said it could have been anywhere from two months before the fundraiser to a month after.

“He showed a little bit of interest in the City Commission race, but honestly I think that was just him being polite,” Minor said. “As I remember it, he was more focused on his investment projects.”

Minor said he recalls the man was from out of town. And while he doesn’t recall whether Miller said he was from Nashville, Minor said the Southern Pines business name sounded familiar.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the company he talked about,” said Minor.

Minor never saw Miller again. Neither did Long.

“Sometimes people are just kicking the tires and you don’t hear from them again,” Long said. “And in this case, we didn’t.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.

Democrat staff writer Karl Etters contributed to this story.