Tragic Hamptons mogul Brandon Miller tried to ‘keep up with the Bezoses’ but ended up $17M in debt: source
Pretty little lies led to a bonfire of the vanities.
That sums up how rich millennials in the Hamptons are explaining the downfall of real estate developer Brandon Miller, who was found unconscious in the garage of his $8 million Water Mill home, leaving behind his social influencer wife, Candice Miller, and their two little girls.
Brandon, 43, the principal partner at Real Estate Equity Corporation, was married to Candice, founder of the lifestyle and mommy blog Mama & Tata and a prominent face on the Hamptons social scene.
He died July 3 after several days at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, where he was taken after being found unconscious in his car.
His collection of classic, expensively restored rides included a 1958 Porsche 356A Speedster, a 1971 Ferrari Daytona coupe and a 1968 Ford Bronco.
The local fire department was alerted by a carbon monoxide alarm in the garage.
No cause of death has officially been released.
Brandon was thought to be about $17 million in debt at the time of his death, a source told The Post.
His wife and young daughters — who had been staying at a luxe hotel on the Amalfi Coast in Italy as part of a lavish trip to Europe that was chronicled on Candice’s Instagram — flew home and were reportedly able to see him before he died.
His death laid bare a carefully curated fairy-tale life, shown to the world on Candice’s Instagram and blog (which have now been shut down), in which he appeared as the lucky and affectionate head of a family who professed their love to each other every night.
They shuttled between their lavish homes in the Hamptons and Manhattan.
“It’s no longer keeping up with the Joneses. It’s like keeping up with the Bezoses, but no one can compete,” one Hamptons socialite told The Post.
“There’s a whole kind of rich now that never existed before. They [the Millers] were trying … They were living way beyond their means, and now the truth has come out. There are probably 10 or 20 people in the Hamptons who qualify as billionaires. But you can be sure they’re not the ones sharing their lives on Instagram.”
Candice — whose friend circle included Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, stylist Rachel Zoe and Ivanka Trump, as well as her cousin, Something Navy fashion blogger Arielle Charnas — inspired both envy and resentment for showing off what everyone presumed was enormous wealth and a perfect family.
Candice is also a head buyer for the Tenet shop in Southampton and runs a vintage-inspired clothing line called Black Iris.
She bragged about her weekly Aida Bicaj $800 facials and her membership at the Tracy Anderson exercise studio, threw $100,000 parties and spared no expense when she and Brandon renewed their vows in 2019. The theme was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Sources told The Post she even downloaded full-length movies while flying on private jets — a practice which can run into the thousands.
But while money was flowing out of the Millers’ hands like water, it was slow coming in, allegedly due to questionable business dealings and lawsuits that were piling up.
Two sources told The Post that Brandon had borrowed about $17 million from friends in the couple’s social circle, ostensibly to buy a downtown Manhattan building. But the building was sold to someone else and Brandon was forced to tell investors he had used their money for something else.
He had been hit with lawsuits — including one concerning a luxury furniture rental and another over $50,000 in boat-related fees — just months before his death.
Brandon was sued by an interior designer April 19 after he allegedly “failed and refused to pay” $102,730.27 for the company’s luxury rental services, according to the complaint obtained by The Post.
He also “refused to return” more than $64,000 worth of furnishings from his and Candice’s Park Avenue apartment, the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court alleged.
That home, according to a property listing, spanned more than 4,300 square feet — with five bedrooms, a private elevator and a great room alone that measured 800 square feet. Worth around $11 million, it rented for just shy of $50,000 a month.
The Millers moved there after selling their Tribeca penthouse for about $9 million.
Separately, Miller was sued on May 15 by Lighthouse Marina for allegedly failing to pay his balances on his boat, MillerTime, which had been docking at the Long Island facility since October 2020
Brandon had inherited his commercial and residential real estate firm, REEC, or Real Estate Equities Corporation, from his father, shopping mall tycoon Michael Miller, who died in 2016.
It came out after the elder Miller’s death that he had allegedly told his assistant to forge Brandon’s signature on loan documents related to a condo project, according to court records. The lawsuit was settled, according to court documents reported by the Real Deal.
Several insiders suggested to The Post that Candice put pressure on her husband to live up to the life she portrayed on social media, but could offer no proof.
On Mama & Tata, which she ran with her sister Jenna Crespi, and elsewhere online, there was evidence of fabulous vacations — including visits to the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris (where suites start at $2,500 a night) and La Residencia Hotel in Mallorca ($2,000 a night) — as well as dinners from personal chefs, appearances at countless high-society charity events and a guest spot at the opening of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop gift shop.
What Candice knew and when she knew about her family’s finances is up for debate among those in her circle, with one source telling The Post she had no clue about her husband’s money difficulties.
The Post was unable to reach Candice Miller. Calls to members of both Brandon and Candice Miller’s families were not returned.
“A lot of the marriages in the Hamptons and Manhattan are transactional,” a businessman who’s a notable member of the Southampton social set told The Post — though he made clear that the Millers’ marriage did not fall in that category as they had known each other since childhood.
“The guy is wealthy and the girl is beautiful. That’s the deal they make. But things have changed so much here that the pressure to keep up is off the charts.
“Candice made it harder for Brandon because she was flaunting so much on social media,” he added. “But they are by no means the only ones. There’s a lot of people are renting big houses or going into debt to throw parties in an effort to get into the really rich circles with billionaires like Michael Rubin and Michael Loeb, and the Millers were like that. They weren’t quite in the top tier.”
But one prominent socialite who splits her time between the Hamptons and the Upper East Side disputes this.
“I call BS on everyone blaming Candice,” she said. “No way. Brandon clearly thought he was going to jail for embezzlement and he decided this was his way out.”
Another source told The Post that Miller was suffering from mental health issues and had never gotten over his father’s death.
“I followed her religiously,” Eric Gordon, a women’s clothing entrepreneur who is president of Stylehouse NYC, told The Post. “I liked her look and style. But after a while I got a little suspicious and frankly a little nauseated by all the showing off she did with their vacations to Spain and Italy. She and I DM’ed occasionally and after Oct. 7, I wrote her and said, ‘Enough with posting only about your glamorous lifestyle. Speak up, you’re Jewish.’ And to her credit, she did repost a few things. But I felt something was off there.”
Gordon himself publicly chided Arielle Charnas, Candice’s cousin by marriage, for posing for party pictures on her Instagram account just four days after Brandon’s death.
“Give it a break – ur BFF hubby just [died] – she disappeared – you and her crew should all get a real life and stop showing WHAT IS ISN’T!” he wrote on Charnas’ Instagram.
Charnas did not respond to calls from The Post.
It’s unclear what Candice has planned for herself and her girls, but their next chapter may look a lot different from the past.
“On most days,” she told Mini Magazine in 2019, “what I really look forward to is arriving home, and sitting for dinners with my husband and my girls, followed by some very yummy snuggles before bedtime, where we all profess our love for one another over and over again.”
Mommy blogs and Reddit forums were awash in threads about Brandon Miller’s death.
“I’m ashamed that I’m feeling almost relieved that it wasn’t all real,” one poster wrote on the DC Urban Mom blog.
“It’s impossibly sad,” wrote someone on Reddit. “They will grow up to wish everyday they could have just lived a simple life in the Midwest if it could have meant having their father. I’m sure they loved him very much.”
Additional reporting by Jeanette Settembre
