UPDATED STORY:Scott Maddox, Paige Carter-Smith plead guilty in Tallahassee public corruption probe

Scott Maddox, whose long political career in Tallahassee came crashing down after his indictment on public corruption charges, will plead guilty to at least some of the counts against him next week in federal court.

A notice filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee shows a hearing has been set for Tuesday for both Maddox and his close friend Paige Carter-Smith to change their pleas to guilty. It is not clear from the filing whether they will plead guilty to all or only some of the charges.

It’s a major development in the federal government’s long-running investigation into public corruption in Tallahassee and a likely signal that Maddox and Carter-Smith plan to cooperate with authorities to try to get their sentences reduced.

If they cooperate, prosecutors will use their information to build cases against other prominent politicians or business people who the FBI suspects committed crimes, said David Moye, a former federal prosecutor in private practice in Tallahassee.

“It’s insider knowledge now that they need to confirm those suspicions,” Moye said. “And that’s what the defendants in the conspiracy have to offer. There may be major targets for which these two defendants could connect some dots.”

Maddox and Carter-Smith, former executive director of the Downtown Improvement Authority, were indicted in December by a federal grand jury on numerous charges, including racketeering, extortion, wire fraud and bank fraud. A third co-defendant, local businessman John “J.T.” Burnette, was indicted in May on charges including racketeering and fraud.

From 'Boy Mayor' to 44 counts:The career arc of Tallahassee Commissioner Scott Maddox

The grand jury alleged Maddox and Carter-Smith extorted money from city vendors and accepted bribes in exchange for favorable official action, funneling the proceeds through their Governance consulting firm. Burnette allegedly helped arrange payments to Maddox and Carter-Smith from a development firm that turned out to be an FBI front company.

All three pleaded not guilty during their initial appearances in federal court in Tallahassee. Earlier this year, Maddox and Carter-Smith’s lawyers filed motions asking a judge to dismiss the charges, but the request was denied. Burnette has a similar request pending before the court.

Since the initial indictments dropped, the federal government has exchanged hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and hours of surreptitiously recorded conversations with defense lawyers through the discovery process.

It’s not uncommon for defendants to begin cooperating with the government once they see the mountain of evidence against them, said Joseph Lewis, a retired FBI special agent and former acting assistant director of its criminal division.

"If you're not going to beat it, (cooperating) is the only thing you have," Lewis said in an interview before the plea change was announced. "Because these sentences are pretty stiff."

44 COUNTS: FBI indicts Scott Maddox and associate Paige Carter-Smith on corruption charges

Maddox and Carter-Smith could have faced many years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. And while they could see a reduction in time simply by pleading guilty and forgoing trial, they could get an even bigger break by delivering substantial assistance to the feds about local corruption.

"They are going to have to come up with something to negate the problems they're in," Lewis said. "And what the bureau is going to be looking for is someone higher than them or others like them in their position and/or companies that they dealt with in the recent past that offered bribes."

Maddox’s lawyer, Stephen Dobson III of Tallahassee, could not be reached for comment. Carter-Smith’s lawyer, Stephen Webster of Tallahassee, declined to comment.

Burnette's lawyer, Tim Jansen of Tallahassee, said his client intends to contest the charges at trial despite the guilty pleas from his co-defendants. A trial date of Nov. 4 had been set for all three, though Jansen is asking to push it back to February.

"Mr. Burnette is still planning to go to trial and defend these charges," Jansen said. "He denies the allegations."

The indictments were the result of an investigation dating back to at least the summer of 2015, when undercover FBI agents posing as developers and medical marijuana entrepreneurs arrived in the capital city. The agents got close to Maddox, joining him on a trip to Las Vegas, and then-Mayor Andrew Gillum, accompanying him during outings in New York City, including a performance of “Hamilton.”

Gillum has long asserted that he met with FBI agents in the summer of 2017, just after he launched his campaign for Florida governor, and was told he was not a focus of their investigation. However, the bureau has never confirmed that.

In April, after his loss in the governor’s race, Gillum settled state ethics charges involving the trip to New York and another to Costa Rica, agreeing to pay a $5,000 fine for accepting a banned gift from a lobbyist or vendor. More recently, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas involving Gillum’s 2018 campaign.

Once one of the most powerful and influential local officials in Tallahassee, Maddox saw his political career begin to unravel after subpoenas dropped in 2017 and a photograph surfaced of him with the agents and a little person entertainer in a Vegas hotel room.

He served on the City Commission from 1993 to 2003, including a stint as the city’s first leadership mayor, before returning to the commission in 2012. He also served as chairman of the Florida Democratic Party and mounted several ultimately unsuccessful campaigns for statewide office, including agriculture commissioner and attorney general.

Maddox long denied any wrongdoing in the case, which has been chronicled by the Tallahassee Democrat since subpoenas first dropped in the summer of 2017. According to the indictment, however, his firm took hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments combined from city vendors including Waste Pro, Uber and the FBI front company in exchange for his support.

CHRONICLING THE CASE

The back story:

A TANGLED WEB:

Indictment fallout:

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