Court records reveal the man leading Oxford’s cityhood movement and being paid thousands of tax dollars to maintain the village computer system is in fact a convicted felon who once cheated a church.
In 1976, Tracy Arthur Miller, Sr. ? the 59-year-old husband of village President Renee Donovan ? was convicted of obtaining money by false pretenses from St. Leonard’s Parish in Warren.
As a result of this felony conviction plus two prior convictions, Miller spent nearly four years ? September 1975 to May 1979 ? in Jackson State Prison, according to the Offender Tracking Information System (OTIS), a website maintained by the Michigan Department of Corrections.
According to documents obtained from the Macomb County Circuit Court, Miller ‘fraudulently obtained several checks in the total amount of $141,557 for the construction of a credit union office for St. Leonard’s Parish in Warren.? The final payment was made in March 1974.
Back then, Miller was working as a building contractor.
Court records indicate that in order to obtain the $141,557 from St. Leonard’s, Miller ‘did designedly and falsely represent and pretend that all subcontractors were paid in full? for the credit union’s construction.
He did so by signing a sworn final statement to a title company and accompanying it with signed waivers of lien from all the contractors, according to court records. But in fact all the contractors had not been paid. ‘Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company was not paid for labor and materials contracted for in the amount of $6,683 and subsequently placed a lien . . . against the St. Leonard’s Parish Credit Union,? according to court documents.
At the time Miller was convicted of obtaining money by false pretenses, he had already been serving a prison sentence in Jackson since September 1975 for carrying a concealed weapon and violating the building contractors law.
When asked about his criminal record, Miller twice told this reporter, ‘No comment.?
These days Miller is heavily involved with the Oxford Village government both politically and financially.
Miller founded the village’s latest cityhood effort in 2003 and has chaired it ever since.
Miller’s also been paid more than $157,907 since 2002 to service and upgrade the village’s computer system through his company Next Generation Computers, which he runs from his Sunset Blvd. home in Oxford Lakes.
In June, council approved a three-year, $38,485 computer services maintenance contract with Miller’s Next Generation Computers.