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Court Looks at Whether Ex-Schneider CEO Left Florida

April 14, 2009 — Rodney E. Miller Sr. will take the stand Wednesday to refute claims that he has violated his bail conditions by moving to South Carolina without telling the court.
Last August, Justice officials charged that Miller tried to cover up a 1996 criminal conviction by providing false statements to the government on his employment application at Schneider Regional Medical Center, saying he had received an "honorable or general" discharge instead of disclosing that he had actually received a bad-conduct discharge from the U.S. Navy for attempted larceny, obstruction of justice and fraud. Miller formerly served as president and CEO of the hospital.
Miller posted the $75,000 bail set by the court, but was also subject to several bail conditions, which included continuing to live at his Weston, Fla., home. If Miller moved, he had to let the court know immediately, government attorney Denise George-Counts said Tuesday during a hearing in V.I. Superior Court. The bail conditions were upheld by V.I. Superior Court Judge Michael Dunston after Miller's second arrest last October, she said.
The government has filed a motion to revoke Miller's bail, which would keep him in jail until his criminal trial in October. U.S. Postal Service records indicate that Miller filed for a temporary change of address last September and asked that his mail be forwarded to another residence in South Carolina, U.S. Postal Service Inspector Steve Stebbins testified during Tuesday's hearing.
A letter carrier in Florida said Miller's house had been vacant since September 2008, except for two days in February when the family stopped in, Stebbins said. Another carrier in South Carolina said the mail was being delivered to a single-family home listed under the names Harvin and Miller.
An investigation into Miller's whereabouts was launched after the government was contacted by Broward County bank officials who said Miller was more than $18,000 behind on his mortgage payments, according to Nicholas Peru, a special investigator in the Inspector General's Office. Bank officials said they hadn't been able to contact Miller and "didn't know where he was," Peru said Tuesday. The bank also said it was paying Miller's pool-maintenance bills, he said.
Bank officials said certain pieces of mail sent to Miller's house was marked "undeliverable," while emails sent from the bank to Miller's wife went unanswered, Peru said.
Since the government has frozen Miller's assets, it's understandable that he's behind on some of the bills, Miller's defense attorney, Charles Grant, countered Tuesday. He said the government hasn't been doing its own homework. Neither Peru nor Stebbins had visited the houses — instead, they were relying on secondhand information provided by individuals who didn't see Miller at either residence, Grant said.
An email sent to Peru less than a week ago from another Broward County bank official said that he had visited Miller's Florida house and that it appeared vacant, with no cars in the driveway. Meanwhile, a federal agent in South Carolina also provided Peru with pictures showing two of Miller's cars parked at the house in Beaufort, S.C.
What the government didn't know was that Miller was at the Florida house on the day of the bank official's visit, Grant said Tuesday.
"I was there for five hours and no Mr. Goldstein was there," Grant said to Peru Tuesday. "And there was a red Corvette in the garage — did you know that? A change of address means that mail gets altered, not that human beings get altered."
Meanwhile, Grant pulled out Miller's telephone records, which showed several months' worth of calls being made from Miller's Florida home to South Carolina. It was implied, but never directly said during the hearing, that Miller's wife had moved to South Carolina and had been living with her parents for the past few months, while Miller stayed in Florida.
Dunston recessed the hearing around 6:30 p.m., saying testimony would resume at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
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