Warning: This story deals with suicide
Candice and Brandon Miller showed the public a world of glittering parties and vacations. The money to sustain it did not exist.
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 510-sq m 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 was a grand public display of their perfect life and marriage. Candice Miller told a lifestyle blogger who wrote about the party that her husband’s speech “made me cry by the end with his authentic, raw emotion and romantic words”.
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, which featured a near-constant stream of photographs and videos of her glittering life.
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 a mountain of 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 taken his own life 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.
That Miller’s death occurred in the Hamptons during the height of the social season almost certainly has added to the intrigue, said Neil J. Young, a historian who is writing a book about the Hamptons. Here, the only thing as fascinating as opulent wealth is its sudden disintegration.
“This place is predicated, for a certain set, on showing off,” Young said. “It’s the homes one has, the things one does out here – from the restaurants to the workouts to the parties. But it’s a place where one can get overextended really quickly, where a house of cards can suddenly collapse.”
A chasm separated the Millers’ shimmering public lives and painful private reality. But their fall is also a source of very real grief – a story about trying to have it all and what happens when you cannot.
“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. I am completely devastated.”
‘Mama and Tata’
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 and Miller’s cousin-by-marriage, Arielle Charnas, an Instagram personality who influenced her influencer aspirations. Fitness impresario Tracy Anderson and fashion designer Rachel Zoe made regular appearances.
But it mostly showcased Miller’s personal life and tastes. “Mama and Tata” became an alter ego and self-promotional marketing machine.
She and some friends even started a fashion label that she celebrated with a launch party at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. Her followers got regular glimpses of her active social life against the backdrop of grand homes in Manhattan and Southampton, European resorts, private planes, classic sports cars and speedboats.
She was known for her vintage designer gowns and for private fitness sessions (about US$250 per hour on top of US$900 monthly studio membership fees) that she filmed and shared online.
The Miller children’s birthdays were also an opportunity for Miller to entertain on a grand scale – for friends and for online fans.
A Coachella-themed party for one daughter spawned a torrent of Instagram posts tagging the vendors Miller hired: a party planner, a florist and a DJ. Helping to keep it all afloat were nannies, housekeepers, drivers, boat captains and personal chefs.
But while “Mama and Tata” revelled in luxury, it spent no time delving into how the splendour was being paid for.
Although Miller poured time into her Instagram feed, it did not generate much revenue. Instead, “Mama and Tata” enhanced her profile in other ways.
In a 2019 article for an online magazine about the Millers’ Manhattan home – “our town house in the sky,” she called it – she posed for photographs with her two young daughters. The living room was decorated in all white, down to the white-spined books on the shelves. “It is so beautiful to sit in, as long as you aren’t wearing anything that bleeds and exclusively drinking water,” she said.
Brandon Miller, on the other hand, eschewed social media – he primarily used a flip phone. Friends described him as a movie buff, basketball fan and car aficionado.
But when it came to his wife’s devotion to sharing their life online, she said he was all in. “I have the most supportive husband who encourages me to do whatever I love,” she told a lifestyle blog.
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 her husband focused on his business, which they rarely discussed.
She had visited his office only once, and she met his business partner just three times – including, most recently, beside her husband’s grave.
‘People who can lose everything’
Brandon Miller developed commercial and residential projects in New York City’s Tribeca, Harlem and the Meatpacking District. He appeared to be a successful businessperson in a city filled with them.
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.
He was in a financial free fall that confidants are now struggling to piece together.
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 that easily accommodated sit-down dinners for 60 friends.
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.
“You’re dealing with people who can lose everything,” said Jay Neveloff, a real estate lawyer in New York.
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. And although the residential market rebounded, the demand for office space did not return to prepandemic levels.
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 US$9 million ($15m), according to city records. The family members set their sights on living uptown, in the type of co-op building that Miller had grown up in. But buying on the Upper East Side would have required significant cash.
Instead, they rented a 404sq m, five-bedroom apartment on the corner of Park Ave and East 71st St, according to court records – keeping up appearances for US$47,000 ($78,000) per month. They decorated with rented furniture for which they paid US$180,000 ($300,000) for one year, according to a lawsuit filed this spring, and US$12,000 ($20,000) per month after the first year.
If this was downsizing, it wasn’t enough.
Miller stopped paying some of the family’s bills, including, according to a lawsuit, the maintenance and docking fees for their Van Dutch speedboat – a frequent backdrop for late-night parties shared on Instagram. Such models generally sell for more than US$1m ($1.6m).
And he leveraged the family’s prize asset, the Hamptons home, piling one mortgage atop another. He took out a US$6.1m ($10m) loan from a conventional bank. Then, records show, he arranged another US$2m ($3.3m) 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. Candice Miller posed for photos with friends in a sleek white dress.
But Brandon Miller’s desperation was growing. A few weeks later, he borrowed yet more money against the house: a US$2m 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. Nivakoff declined to comment.
None of this was apparent to Candice Miller’s online audience. In a video posted by Hamptons Magazine in July 2023, Miller, in a strapless summer dress, answered questions about her preferred hot spots. Chicest shopping? “Chanel, East Hampton,” she answered.
A fateful meeting
By the fall of 2023, Brandon Miller could no longer hide the strain. His friends, aware of both his family’s expensive lifestyle and the sluggish real estate market, assumed he was struggling with debt.
Three of them arranged an intervention of sorts, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
The day before the meeting, the friends spoke by phone to discuss their approach. As they did, one of them searched the internet for a property that Miller was ostensibly developing in Brooklyn. The friend had invested US$1m in the project and had encouraged several colleagues to invest an additional US$500,000 ($833,000) in all.
What he found online was alarming: the property had been purchased more than a month earlier by a developer with no connection to Miller.
Miller arrived at the meeting looking glum, according to three people familiar with what happened. He had just visited his father’s grave on the seventh anniversary of his death – an event from which those close to Miller say he never fully recovered.
The friend who had given him money for the Brooklyn project told Miller that he felt misled and angry.
Miller broke down in tears. He insisted he had not done anything wrong but lamented that he had let his friend down.
The friend became teary-eyed and walked out. After a 15-year friendship, he and Miller never spoke again.
Reached for comment, the friend said their fractured relationship and Miller’s death have devastated him, and he otherwise asked for privacy. He has told others that he believed Miller had sincerely intended to use his money as a business investment before the deal went awry. Then, he believed, Miller let his financial burdens cloud his judgment.
Miller’s business troubles did not abate. He took over a land lease near the High Line in Manhattan that would require annual payments of more than US$2m, according to a person familiar with the transaction. He immediately borrowed US$1.5m against it, according to public filings and people familiar with the transaction.
Within months, Miller fell behind in making the lease payments, Benny Barmapov, the landowner, said in an interview.
The pressure intensified when a private equity firm that had lent Miller’s company US$36m to help finance a development tried to collect on the overdue repayment.
At home, creditors were demanding money, too. The marina that serviced the Millers’ boat sued for US$55,000. The furniture rental company claimed in a lawsuit that he owed US$100,000 in fees and had refused to return US$64,000 in borrowed furniture.
Although his friends could sense something was wrong, Candice Miller has said she was unaware of the family’s financial crisis, according to two people familiar with her thinking.
In January she was quoted in the Times, extolling the benefits of a US$800 ($1,300) facial over filler injections and plastic surgery. “This makes you feel like your face doesn’t need that stuff,” she said, “if you’re truly committing to going every week or every other week.”
A cancelled vacation
Earlier this year, the Millers were invited to spend a few days in the Bahamas at the home of Nivakoff, the friend who had helped underwrite one of Brandon Miller’s mortgages. 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 cancelled 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, including one he had invested in.
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.
Even then, their financial straits were growing more perilous. In early June, he borrowed US$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 – after all, he told her, the trip was already paid for.
Candice Miller took their daughters abroad and posted photographs from Spain and Italy. Only later did they learn the trip had not been paid for; after her credit card was declined, her travel agent had to guarantee the hotel bill would be paid.
On June 28, Brandon 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.
But he also reached out to at least one friend that week for a loan that should have been pocket change for someone like him: US$1000, according to two people aware of the request. On June 29, he attended a polo match and barbecue in the Hamptons.
On June 30, police were notified that an alarm had gone off at the Millers’ home. Emergency medical workers found Miller unconscious, a Suffolk County law enforcement official said. Rescue workers found near him 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 totalling about US$15 million. He wrote that he had struggled against dark feelings for years.
In a graveside ceremony attended by family and a small circle of friends, 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 US$800,000 in missed payments and interest. Miller Time was repossessed. And the “Mama and Tata” Instagram account was pulled offline.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Katherine Rosman
Photographs by: Karsten Moran and Rebecca Smeyne
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES