FBI agents went undercover in Florida's capital for the 'biggest investigation in years'

Show Caption Hide Caption Watch it: Who is Mike Miller? Is Mike Miller a developer from Atlanta? Or someone else?

TALLAHASSEE - Buff, bearded and handsome, Atlanta developer Mike Miller sat sipping a cocktail one afternoon last summer outside the spiffy Power Plant Cafe in the city’s new central park. Relaxed, with shirt collar open, he chatted up the head of the local Community Redevelopment Agency, spinning his grand plans to redevelop a not-yet-gentrified block in the shadow of Florida’s Capitol.

The meeting was one of many Miller had with local elected officials and hot-shot developers, beginning in 2015, when he rolled into the steamy, Spanish-moss draped seat of Florida state government. More south Georgia than South Beach, Tallahassee was hungry for the likes of Miller, an out-of-towner willing to spend millions to revitalize downtown as the capital city ached to rebrand itself as a place open for business.

But Miller was not what he appeared. After spending nearly two years infiltrating the burgeoning ranks of up-and-coming entrepreneurs and wooing the town’s politicians over wine and tapas, he vanished.

Until early this summer, that is, when a pair of FBI subpoenas were dropped on City Hall. Miller, it turned out, was no ordinary developer. He was an undercover FBI agent, sources close to the federal investigation said, the linchpin in an elaborate scheme to ferret out public corruption, which could lead to huge political shake-ups.

Often, Miller was accompanied by two other believed FBI undercover agents, sidekicks with spot-on Hollywood archetypes: An aspiring medical marijuana magnate from out West with blonde surfer hair, and a chubby, bald-headed leader of an energy efficiency company.

The apparent head of the federal probe – looking to land a new gig at the Florida Bar — boasted about his last job as head of the FBI’s North Florida Public Corruption Task Force. In his application, he described his most recent case, one with a $500,000 budget and a time frame similar to the Tallahassee investigation. For that case, he had a 25-member staff, including undercover agents, intelligence analysts, an airplane, covert vehicles, surveillance equipment and investigative techniques not used in decades.

At the time of the Power Plant meeting in July 2016, “Mike Miller” already was a year into what appears to be a massive, multi-year investigation of local politicians, their friends and millions of dollars in taxpayer redevelopment money. In the crosshairs may be some of Florida’s most ambitious political climbers, including its mayor, who has his sights set on the Governor’s Mansion.

Whispers of corruption are commonplace in the one-degree-of-separation government town halfway between Pensacola and Jacksonville. Teeming with lobbyists, professors and political sophisticates, local officials can barely keep an arms-length from those who seek to influence them. Over the years, rumored FBI investigations have come and gone without any charges.

This time, however, political gadflies are bracing for indictments to come as sure as August afternoon thunderstorms.

Tallahassee’s rat

Public corruption is the FBI’s chief criminal investigative priority and is something it does very well.

The Tallahassee case whiffs of perhaps the agency’s most famous case: The undercover Abscam operation of the 1970s, which brought down dirty art dealers, phony stock traders and crooked congressmen.

From 1996 to 2015, U.S. Attorney offices charged 5,411 local officials with public corruption crimes, earning 4,699 convictions, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The investigation in Tallahassee is one of roughly 5,000 the FBI launched from roughly 2012 to 2016 concerning allegations of public corruption, election crimes or government fraud.

“It’s very big,” said James Wedick, a retired FBI undercover agent who worked hundreds of public corruption cases at all levels of government. “Public corruption is one of the one violations that the bureau is best at handling. We’ve got the money, resources and agents to do it and we’ve got the people that understand the crime.”

Local governments are more vulnerable to corruption, said Wedick, who worked some early Abscam cases, because there are fewer eyes watching. Payments typically don’t need to go through the same approval process required at the state and federal level.

Really corrupt politicians deal in straight cash, but many others are willing to sell votes or other government services for surprisingly little money, Wedick said. Bribes can take the form of “street currency” — dinners and sports tickets. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, prosecutors said all it took for Mayor Ed Pawlowski to dole out a city contract was a steak dinner, campaign contributions and tickets to a Philadelphia Eagles playoff game.

Public corruption cases require a boots-on-the ground approach. Wedick said agents are trained to read local news reports, chat with local activists and collect scuttlebutt.

In the case of Tallahassee’s Mike Miller, one of the first places he hobnobbed was the Gulf Coast resort Sandestin, where he took part in the local Chamber of Commerce annual retreat in 2015. It was an easy place to make a good first impression, with its focus on networking, greased by nightly open bars, dining and dancing.

Undercover agents are taught to ask questions and present problems for suspects to solve, Wedick said. Miller consistently posed the same quandary to Tallahassee officials: He wanted to build outside the local redevelopment zone - who could help him get the boundaries expanded?

It’s likely someone in Tallahassee was either operating as an FBI informant or a cooperating witness. Cooperating witnesses, Wedick said, are used to introduce an undercover agent and record their conversations using surveillance equipment. “CWs” as they’re called, are often outed when attorneys swap evidence. Informants do not record their conversations and their identity is protected.

Many of Miller’s liaisons were facilitated by a local lobbyist, Adam Corey, and his associate Nick Lowe, a former Tallahassee Police Department officer. The duo set up the meeting at the Power Plant Café - where expanding the redevelopment area was discussed - as well as others with county and city officials, including Corey’s friend Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who is running for governor.

Following years of meetings and input from government planners, Miller got what he wanted. The day after the Power Plant Café meeting, the redevelopment agency, made up of members of both the city and the county commissions, voted on an in-the-works plan to expand - as it happened, incorporating the land he sought to develop.

'Many targets'

Two weeks before he met with Mike Miller, Mayor Gillum introduced former president Bill Clinton to a group of local Democrats at an exclusive backyard fundraiser.

The former commander in chief, wearing a blue pin-striped suit and pink tie, boasted about his wife’s success with black Southern voters and posed for pictures at $2,700 a pop. Gillum, already a key part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and on her short list for appointments, stood behind the former president. His political stock was soaring

A year later, Gillum, 38, is a top candidate for Florida governor, but no one is talking much about the Clintons anymore. Everyone wants to know about that mid-May meeting over tapas and drinks with the undercover agent.

The mayor's office has acknowledged Gillum met with Miller, an appointment with the undercover agent was noted on his calendar. His city commission colleague Scott Maddox, former head of the state Democratic Party, also hasn’t said whether he met the mystery developer.

Both Gillum and Maddox, who opted not to comment for this story, are perhaps two of the most prominent politicians Tallahassee has ever produced and are the most likely to feel political ramifications of the FBI investigation. They’ve both clung to the advice of the city’s attorney to not speak about the FBI investigation. Gillum said he’s been told by the FBI he is not a target.

The investigation was the elephant in the room last weekend at the Chamber of Commerce gathering, the same one Miller attended two years ago. Many downplayed or seemed unfazed by the FBI’s public corruption probe and one local attorney called it a distraction.

“All of us want to figure out what’s going on, without a doubt,” Gillum said at the retreat. “I think we have to hedge by not trying to get in front of what the facts are telling us.”

The federal subpoenas include people and companies that have been ethical thorns for both Maddox and Gillum. Among those listed are Corey, Gillum’s ex-campaign treasurer, and Corey’s restaurant the Edison, which got millions in public money to redevelop an old city electric building. The restaurant has a group of mostly secret investors, one of which is a lobbyist for the city and another Gillum friend.

A lobbying firm founded by Maddox and now owned by his ex-chief of staff, also is under the microscope of federal prosecutors. Paige Carter-Smith and Maddox have had a tight relationship going back to high school, mixing business, politics and friendship. Over the years, Maddox sold her more than a million dollars in real estate, including a building bearing his name and the house where he still lives. Maddox sold his lobbying firm to her in 2010 before returning to public office, finalizing the $100,000 deal on a hand-scrawled piece of paper.

Gillum and Maddox’s decision to remain mum on Miller is made more noticeable by the fact their CRA colleagues either quickly declared they hadn’t met the man or gushed details on their meetings with him -- from what he wore and what he drank, to the specifics of his proposed project which local government planners sketched out.

An attorney for a person of interest in the case said there are “many targets” not listed in the subpoena. He called it the “biggest investigation in years.”

Wedick suggests the FBI must have something on Tallahassee to employ an undercover agent for so long. Agents, he said, must prove the worth of their investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI national office every six months.

“The fact that it went two years says that, to me, that he had sufficient information in there for them to justify the two-year period,” he said. “And that’s a pretty high standard.”

Tallahasseeans are accustomed to talk of the feds coming to town. Both the former mayor and school superintendent were investigated by the FBI in recent years. Nothing came of either case.

But in a town where cozy relationships and intertwined business interests have long fueled corruption conspiracy theories, the wide scope of the latest probe suggests it’s not a matter of if, but when charges will come down.

Reporting by Jeff Burlew, Jeff Schweers and TaMaryn Waters, all of the Tallahassee Democrat, contributed to this story. Contact them at jburlew@tallahassee.com, jschweers@tallahassee.com and twaters@tallahassee.com.

Sean Rossman is a former Tallahassee Democrat staff writer. Follow him on Twitter: @SeanRossman or contact him at srossman@usatoday.com