ORLANDO, Fla. — Jay Miller had recently co-founded Save Rural Seminole, a citizen advocacy group opposed to a developer’s plan to build hundreds of homes on protected land, when a local blogger began attacking him online in the summer of 2018, including a post about an incident in which he was arrested but prosecutors declined to press charges.
Around the same time, Miller, who worked for a military contractor, said he got a call from his boss who told him the company had received an anonymous letter accusing him of drug-dealing and other crimes. Miller said it was untrue and his boss later said they cleared him after looking into the claims.
Miller still doesn’t know who sent the letter. But soon after, he said he got a call from Jacob Engels, who’d written the blog post about Miller’s arrest on his website, Central Florida Post. Engels, he said, offered to begin writing positive stories about Save Rural Seminole and its leaders — in exchange for $10,000.
