Scott Maddox, the former Tallahassee mayor whose political career ended in infamy with his conviction on public corruption charges, talked about the notorious case and his time in federal prison during a recent podcast appearance.
Maddox, 58, was sentenced in 2021 to five years in prison on federal bribery charges as part of the FBI’s “Operation Capital Currency,” a long-running investigation into pay-for-play in Tallahassee that featured a colorful cast of undercover FBI agents.
He was convicted of taking bribes from one agent posing as an out-of-town developer and getting paid through a shady lobbying firm he ran with his co-defendant, Paige Carter-Smith, to support proposed ordinance provisions favorable to Uber.
Once one of Tallahassee’s most powerful political figures, Maddox has largely shunned the spotlight since he was released from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons in 2024.
He opted to make what appear to be his first public comments about his downfall on a podcast called “Nightmare Success In and Out,” hosted by Brent Cassity, a former CEO who also ended up in federal prison.
“To me, I feel like God put me in timeout,” Maddox told Cassity. “Of course, if I could go back with a time machine, I would certainly avoid this for my family’s sake. Absent that, I learned a lot from it.”
During the nearly 90-minute show, Maddox reflected on his entire life, from his childhood in south Miami-Dade County, where he grew up in a law enforcement family, to a particularly harrowing week he spent inside a federal prison cell in Atlanta.
Maddox talked about his infamous trip to Las Vegas, when he and another co-defendant, wealthy developer J.T. Burnette, partied at the Hustler Club with undercover agents footing the bill.
And he mentioned his participation in a prison drug and alcohol treatment program called RDAP that shaved time off his sentence.
One thing he did not do was express remorse for the crimes he was convicted of committing. He said he “never took any money” and “never would have” and that he “didn’t do what I was accused of doing.”
‘Clearly, I never had intent to commit a crime,” he said.
Maddox suggests charges against him were politically motivated
Maddox and Carter-Smith were indicted in 2018 on a litany of charges, including racketeering, extortion and bank fraud. They pleaded guilty in 2019 to three of 44 counts: honest services wire fraud, honest service wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Carter-Smith, his longtime business partner, whom he married in March, also was convicted, along with Burnette. Former Mayor Andrew Gillum and his close adviser Sharon Lettman-Hicks were indicted later on campaign-related charges but acquitted at trial.
Maddox and Carter-Smith acknowledged their guilt years ago in signed statements of facts. In 2015, Uber paid their Governance firm $40,000, which in turn paid the same amount to Maddox. In late 2016 and early 2017, an FBI front company, Southern Pines Development, sent four $10,000 checks to the firm.
They also acknowledged the government could prove other crimes, including accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies like Waste Pro, the city and county’s trash vendor, and unnamed residential development and construction businesses.
“You solicited payments in exchange for your vote,” U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle told Maddox during his plea hearing.
On the podcast, Maddox claimed the feds went after Gillum first but were told to “back down,” prompting them to make him a “target.” He added that state and local law enforcement look for criminals after a crime is committed but that the federal government does it the other way around.
“On the federal level and with white collar crimes, they find who they want to be the criminal and then keep looking until they find a crime or what can be alleged as a crime,” he said.
Maddox was first elected to the City Commission in 1993 and became the city’s first elected mayor in 1997. After cycling off the commission, he made unsuccessful bids for state office and served as chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. He returned to the City Commission in 2012 but was suspended from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2018 and removed the following year.
He compared his charges to the four indictments filed against Donald Trump ahead of his third White House bid, saying there was “no way” he would have been charged had he not been running for president.
“This is not a left or right issue,” he said. “It’s the weaponization of the justice system. It’s unconscionable, and it continues to happen.”
Ex-mayor experienced ‘culture shock’ in prison
Maddox initially was expected to serve his time at a federal prison camp in Pensacola but said that changed after the Democrat wrote a front-page article about its reputation as the “second cushiest” prison in the country.
“Soon thereafter, I got a letter saying I was going to Talladega, Alabama,” he said.
Unlike the Pensacola prison camp, the one in Talladega was attached to a medium-security prison, all surrounded by double fences and razor wire. There weren’t many white collar criminals like him.
“It was a little bit of course of a culture shock we all go through, but I made some great friends there,” he said.
Maddox said he helped fellow inmates get their GEDs and file court motions but that most of the prison staff were “disgusting people” who wouldn’t help an inmate “do anything.” After five months, he was put on transport, moving from Atlanta to Tallahassee and finally Pensacola.
He spent a week in a federal prison in Atlanta with a cellmate who had worked in Tallahassee and recognized him as the former mayor. He called the prison a “horrific” place infested with rats and cockroaches.
“You’re locked in a concrete box, so it took a mental (toll),” he said. “You don’t have anything. You don’t have a book. You don’t have a Bible. But I survived that.”
In Pensacola, he worked near Todd Chrisley, the former reality TV star who served time in the prison camp for tax fraud but was later pardoned by Trump.
“Todd wasn’t in the RDAP program, but he worked in the chapel, so he and I worked in offices next to each other,” Maddox said.
‘Fortunate to be here’
Maddox talked about how many of his rights and opportunities were “stripped away” after his conviction. The disbarred attorney said he can’t practice law, lost his city pension and can’t open a credit card, get a bank loan or rent an apartment.
“I can’t be a Realtor in Florida,” he said. “I can’t sell insurance in Florida. I can’t join the Moose Lodge. You have all these blanket things that saddle people for the rest of their lives.
Maddox said he has been doing “a little consulting,” including working in crisis management with his wife.
“Crisis management, we did a fair amount of that in the consulting world when I was in the private sector before all of this,” he said. “I’m so much better at it today.”
Maddox, who ate tuna out of a bag with pork rinds on top for a year to avoid “expired” prison food, said he learned from his experience that he can survive major problems.
He said at Talladega, he learned to see “beauty in my surroundings,” including a lone dandelion on a walking track or a deer in the distance. He said he looked at every moon and every sunset, sometimes taking inmates with him.
“To this day, I go out at night and look at the sky, and I realize what a small part of the universe I am,” he said. “And I am fortunate to be here and grateful for what I have today. And that was a gift.”
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Ex-Tallahassee Mayor Scott Maddox opens up in podcast: ‘God put me in timeout’
Reporting by Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat | USA TODAY Network
