The resume Robert Miller has offered to the public shows that he is a lawyer, a banker and a real estate tycoon.
The 54-year-old’s real resume, prosecutors allege, is that of a career con man. He has been arrested 57 times and has been convicted 17 times, on charges ranging from impersonating a lawyer to operating a boat while intoxicated. He has spent nearly 5,000 days in jail.
Law enforcement sources grumbled privately Thursday that the smooth-talking Miller might have pulled another fast one. Facing 130 years in prison for bilking hundreds of Baltimore- and Washington-area residents out of nearly $500,000 in a real-estate scam, Miller filed a last-minute, hand-written, single-spaced, 170-page legal motion that delayed his sentencing.
Even Miller’s lawyer, federal Public Defender Jonathan Jeffress, seemed uncomfortable in a Washington courtroom Thursday asking for the extension.
“This is a situation I’ve never been in before,” Jeffress told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon. “Mr. Miller disagreed with his counsel.”
Prosecutor John Griffith is seeking the hefty sentence because, he wrote in court papers, Miller is a cold-blooded, unrepentant con man who has preyed on the weak all around the country.
“Like the calculation of pi, Miller’s criminal history has been endless,” Griffith wrote. “In just the past year, while incarcerated, he has attempted to obtain millions of dollars in credit lines through false pretenses, opened his own retail Web site and engaged in other unauthorized practices. Enough.”
Hundreds of low income people with bad credit were taken by Miller on the real estate scheme in 2003 and 2004, prosecutors say. He used glossy advertisements from another real estate company, offering them as “homes” for sale to his victims.
He then brought in dozens of other investors in a “hard cash money” pool, “guaranteeing” them profits between 15 percent and 100 percent. He surrounded himself with a staff of 40 in a glass-and-steel office near the White House, driving a sports car and dressing in expensive clothes.
He was arrested in April 2004 and indicted on 11 counts of fraud. While awaiting trial, he was convicted of another scheme in Maryland and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Miller — small, wiry, wearing a bright orange prisoner jumpsuit and thick glasses — fidgeted throughout Thursday’s hearing. He spoke only once, when he promised Leon that he wouldn’t file any further motions in his case.
He’s continues to be jailed without bail and now is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 13.
