The former home of Brandon and Candice Miller, in Water Mill, N.Y., on July 26, 2024. The Miller’s showed the public a world of glittering parties and vacations. The money to sustain it did not exist. (Johnny Milano/The New York Times)
In the modern Gilded Age of New York, where Instagram is awash in unrestrained displays of wealth, Brandon and Candice Miller were royalty.
At their 10th wedding anniversary “Midsummer Night’s Dream” party, they celebrated with a few dozen friends in the backyard of their 5,500-square-foot vacation home in the Hamptons.
Beautiful women in gowns watched with their handsome husbands as the couple renewed their vows near a swimming pool strewed with peonies and rose petals beneath a canopy of lights.
It all culminated in the kind of envy-inducing images anticipated by the roughly 80,000 followers of “Mama and Tata,” Candice Miller’s popular Instagram feed.
The Midsummer Night party was in 2019. Five years later, the glamorous image that Candice Miller cultivated and promoted has disappeared, replaced with heartbreak, anger and once-secret debt.
Her husband is gone. The home they so ostentatiously lived in, saddled by several mortgages, is not truly their own. Lawsuits from creditors, business bankruptcies, botched investments and even a repossessed boat — called Miller Time — indicate that the wealth needed to maintain their lifestyle had evaporated, if it ever truly existed.
Brandon Miller, 43, died July 3 at a Southampton hospital. A suicide note indicated he had killed himself while his wife and children were on vacation on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, according to a Suffolk County law enforcement official. He said Brandon Miller wrote that a business deal he had hoped would ease the family’s financial strain had collapsed.
His family was stunned. When Candice Miller was contacted for comment, a family spokesperson said she and the children were overwhelmed by grief. “Candice is devastated by the loss of her soulmate, and her two young daughters’ lives are forever impacted by the loss of their beloved daddy,” he said.
The Millers’ downfall has become the focus of obsessive talk in the Hamptons and among internet sleuths who have scoured Candice Miller’s social media presence for clues to what went wrong.
This account of the family’s rise and fall is drawn from property records, legal filings and interviews with those who knew and worked with Brandon Miller. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, few agreed to be cited by name.
A chasm separated the Millers’ shimmering public lives and painful private reality.
“What people aren’t discussing in all of this is the loss of my little brother, someone I have loved unconditionally,” Miller’s sister, Maurley Miller, said in a statement after being contacted by The New York Times. “I have a hole in my heart that will never be filled.”
Perhaps no place in America is as perfectly Instagram-ready as the Hamptons, where striking natural beauty and extravagant wealth are juxtaposed in abundance. Lifestyle and fashion influencers spend their summers at the eastern end of Long Island, documenting their sumptuous lives.
Candice Miller, 42, added to that canon when she and her sister, Jenna Crespi, started the “Mama and Tata” website and Instagram account in 2016 to provide fashion, shopping and decorating tips for wealthy women.
The account highlighted people in Miller’s orbit, including Ivanka Trump.
But it mostly showcased Candice Miller’s personal life and tastes. “Mama and Tata” became an alter ego and self-promotional marketing machine.
Brandon Miller, on the other hand, eschewed social media — he primarily used a flip phone.
Off camera, they maintained traditional separations of duties, said a person familiar with their family dynamics. Candice Miller oversaw the daily care of the children, and Brandon Miller focused on his business, which they rarely discussed.
Miller developed commercial and residential projects in New York City’s Tribeca, Harlem and the Meatpacking District.
Yet, by fall of 2023, he was under so much pressure that when he attended a business meeting in a midtown high-rise, according to three people familiar with what happened, he sat at a conference table and began to weep.
Miller began working in real estate a few years after graduating from Brown University, joining his father’s firm. Early in his marriage, the company developed a residential building in Tribeca, and he acquired Unit 3 — the penthouse — for his family.
He and his father also bought two connecting lots in the Hamptons — one on the water and one behind it. They built homes on both and sold one on the open market. Brandon Miller kept the other, a lavish home with expansive grounds.
The homes acquired from his father’s firm allowed the Millers to live as if they were megamillionaires.
But Miller’s primary focus was commercial development. In a typical project, he raised money from investors to secure a long-term lease on a parcel of land before commissioning architects to plan a building. Once permits were in place, he sold the lease, the building plan and its permits to another developer for a profit, or took on more debt to cover construction costs.
Even when such projects go smoothly, the work can require developers to leverage many assets to secure loans that will carry them through the process.
Miller’s father, Michael Miller, managed that risk for many years, but his assets were highly leveraged when he died unexpectedly in 2016. His company and survivors were hit with lawsuits.
After his father’s death, Miller took over the company, alongside his father’s former partner. But soon, the pandemic made a challenging business even more difficult, as the city’s real estate market plunged.
Miller found himself in a financial crunch. In 2021, near the bottom of the pandemic market, he sold the family’s Tribeca home for just over $9 million, according to city records.
They rented a 4,382-square-foot, five-bedroom apartment on the corner of Park Avenue and East 71st Street, according to court records — keeping up appearances for $47,000 per month. They decorated with rented furniture for which they paid $180,000 for one year, according to a lawsuit.
If this was downsizing, it wasn’t enough.
Miller stopped paying some of the family’s bills. And he leveraged the family’s prize asset, the Hamptons home, piling one mortgage atop another. He took out a $6.1 million loan from a conventional bank. Then, records show, he arranged another $2 million mortgage from a company that advertised cash loans that close in less than 24 hours.
The Millers continued to entertain in high style. In August 2022, they hosted a “Love Boat” party at Duryea’s, a beachfront restaurant in Montauk.
But Miller’s desperation was growing. A few weeks later, he borrowed yet more money against the house: a $2 million mortgage from a lender in Naples, Florida, facilitated by a family friend, Ryan Nivakoff, who contributed cash to the loan, according to public records and three people familiar with the Millers’ finances.
Earlier this year, the Millers were invited to spend a few days in the Bahamas at the home of Nivakoff. But as the trip approached, Nivakoff wanted Miller to tell his wife about the debt or forget about the trip, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion.
Miller canceled the trip, but Nivakoff did not relent.
In May, he called Candice Miller directly, according to two people she told, and informed her that her husband owed him money. Her family, Nivakoff told her, was broke. Her house was carrying several mortgages.
Miller confronted her husband and asked to see their financial documents. He arranged a call with a lawyer to reassure her and eventually convinced her that everything was under control.
Their financial straits were growing more perilous. In early June, Brandon Miller borrowed $208,000 against the house from a company offering short-term loans. He never paid it back, according to the lender.
Later that month, the family had plans to travel to Europe, but Miller told his wife he had to stay home to close a deal that would help their financial situation, according to three people familiar with the discussion. He encouraged her and the children to go without him.
On June 28, Miller texted his wife to tell her the deal intended to ease their money crisis had closed, according to two people familiar with the situation.
On June 30, police were notified that a carbon monoxide alarm had gone off at the Millers’ home. Emergency medical workers found Miller unconscious in a white Porsche Carrera that he had rigged to poison himself, a Suffolk County law enforcement official said. Rescue workers found in the car a photo of him, his wife and their children.
Miller was rushed to a hospital and placed on life support.
In an email left for his wife, Miller admitted he had lied. The business deal he hoped would save them had fallen apart, he said.
He expressed his love for his wife and children. He wrote that he believed he was doing what was best for them — the note mentioned two life insurance policies totaling about $15 million. He wrote that he had struggled against dark feelings for years.
In a graveside ceremony, he was laid to rest next to his father.
The dismantling of their dream life began almost immediately. A mortgage lender sued Candice Miller for $800,000 in missed payments and interest. Miller Time was repossessed. And the “Mama and Tata” Instagram account was pulled offline.
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If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the United States, or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.
c.2024 The New York Times Company. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
