Pretty little lies led to a burning of the vanities.
That sums up how wealthy Hamptons millennials explain the tragic 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 young daughters.
Brandon, 43, a senior partner at Real Estate Equity Corporation, was married to Candice Miller, founder of the lifestyle and mom blog Mama & Tata and a prominent face on the Hamptons social scene.
He died on July 3 after several days at Stony Brook Hospital in Southampton, where he had been taken after being found unconscious in his car. His collection of expensively restored classic vehicles 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 been officially released.
At the time of his death, Brandon was estimated to be about $17 million in debt, a source told The Post.
His wife and young daughters, who were staying at a luxury hotel on Italy’s Amalfi Coast as part of a lavish European trip chronicled on Candice’s Instagram, flew home and were able to see him before his death.
His death laid bare a carefully curated fairytale life, displayed to the world on Candice’s (now closed) Instagram and blog, in which he appeared as the happy-go-lucky, loving head of the family who professed his love to each other every night as they shuttled between their lavish homes in the Hamptons and Manhattan.
“It’s not about competing with the Joneses anymore, it’s about competing with the Bezoses, but no one can compete,” one Hamptons socialite told The Post.
“There’s a whole category of rich people now that didn’t exist before. They (the Millers) tried… They were living way beyond their means, and now the truth is out. There are probably 10 or 20 people in the Hamptons who can be called billionaires. But you can bet they’re not the ones sharing their lives on Instagram.”
Candice — whose circle of friends included Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, stylist Rachel Zoe and Ivanka Trump, and her cousin, Something Navy fashion blogger Arielle Charnas — inspired both envy and resentment for showing off what everyone assumed was enormous wealth and a picture-perfect family.
Candice is also head buyer for Tenet boutique in Southampton and runs a vintage-inspired clothing line called Black Iris.
She bragged about her $800 weekly Aida Bicaj facials and Tracy Anderson gym membership, 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 that she even downloaded full-length movies while traveling on a private jet, a practice that can cost thousands of dollars.
But while money was flowing out of the Millers’ hands, it was slow to come back, allegedly because of shady business deals and mounting lawsuits.
Two sources told the Post that Brandon 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 the investors he had used their money for something else.
He had been hit with multiple lawsuits — including one over luxury furniture rentals and another over $50,000 boat charges — just months before his death.
Brandon was sued by an interior designer on 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 furniture from his Park Avenue apartment with Candice, according to the complaint filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. That home, according to a real estate listing, spanned more than 4,300 square feet — with five bedrooms, a private elevator and a great room alone measuring 800 square feet. Valued at about $11 million, it rented for just under $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 failing to pay the balance on his boat, MillerTime, which had been docked at the Long Island, New York, facility since October 2020.
Brandon had inherited his commercial and residential real estate company, REEC, or Real Estate Equities Corporation, from his father, shopping mall magnate Michael Miller, who died in 2016.
After Miller Sr.’s death, it was revealed that Miller Sr. had his assistant forge Brandon’s signature on loan documents related to a condominium project, according to court documents. The lawsuit was settled out of court, according to court documents reported by The Real Deal.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter suggested to the Post that Candice pressured her husband to live the life she described on social media, but could not provide any evidence.
On Mama & Tata, which she ran with her sister Jenna Crespi, and elsewhere online, there were accounts of fabulous vacations—including visits to the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris (where suites start at $2,500 a night) and the Hotel La Residencia in Mallorca ($2,000 a night)—as well as dinners with 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 a matter of debate among those close to her, with one source telling the Post she had no idea of her husband’s financial struggles.
The Post was unable to reach Candice Miller. Calls to family members of Brandon and Candice Miller went unanswered.
“A lot of marriages in the Hamptons and Manhattan are transactional,” a businessman who is a notable member of Southampton high society told the Post — though he clarified that the Millers’ marriage did not fall into that category because they had known each other since childhood.
“The guy is rich 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 life harder for Brandon because she was so out there on social media,” he added. “But they’re not alone by any means. There are a lot of people who rent big houses or go into debt to throw parties in order to get into the really wealthy circles with billionaires like Michael Rubin and Michael Loeb, and the Millers were like that. They weren’t quite in the top tier.”
But a prominent socialite who divides her time between the Hamptons and the Upper East Side disputes This.
“I don’t think everyone can blame Candice,” she said. “There’s no way. Brandon clearly thought he was going to jail for embezzlement and he decided that was his solution.”
Another source told the Post that Miller suffered from mental health issues and had never gotten over his father’s death.
“I followed her religiously,” Eric Gordon, a womenswear entrepreneur and president of Stylehouse NYC, told the Post. “I loved her look and her style. But after a while, I became a little suspicious and frankly a little sickened by all the bragging she did about their vacations in Spain and Italy. She and I texted back and forth, and after Oct. 7, I wrote to her and said, ‘Stop posting about your glamorous lifestyle. Speak up, you’re Jewish.’ And to her credit, she did repost a few posts. But I sensed something was amiss.”
Gordon himself publicly chastised Arielle Charnas, Candice’s cousin by marriage, for posing for celebratory photos on her Instagram account just four days after Brandon’s death.
“Take a break – your best friend husband just died – she disappeared – you and her crew should all get a real life and stop showing WHAT IS IS NOT!” he wrote on Charnas’ Instagram.
Charnas did not respond to calls from the Post.
It’s unclear exactly what Candice has planned for herself and her daughters, but their next chapter could be very different from the past.
“Most days,” she told Mini magazine in 2019, “what I look forward to is coming home and sitting down to dinner with my husband and daughters, followed by some really delicious cuddles before bed, where we all profess our love for each other over and over again.”
Mommy blogs and Reddit forums have been flooded with threads about Brandon Miller’s death.
“I feel ashamed, almost relieved that this isn’t real,” wrote one user on the DC Urban Mom blog.
“This is incredibly sad,” someone wrote on Reddit. “They will grow up wishing every day they could have lived a simple life in the Midwest if it meant having their father. I’m sure they loved him very much.”
Additional reporting by Jeanette Settembre