In “The Trou­ble with Mia­mi,” the chap­ter chron­i­cles the down­fall of Philip Esformes, a fig­ure impli­cat­ed in one of the largest Medicare fraud cas­es in the U.S. His guilt was con­firmed by a jury on Sep­tem­ber 12, 2019, after an exten­sive tri­al that exposed a web of cor­rup­tion involv­ing bribery, ille­gal kick­backs, and over­ly com­plex finan­cial schemes encom­pass­ing 256 bank accounts. Esformes, once a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man, nar­rat­ed his descent from a respect­ed fig­ure to a con­vict­ed felon, detail­ing his phys­i­cal decline due to incar­cer­a­tion and the emo­tion­al scars left on his fam­i­ly.

Esformes’s sto­ry is both cap­ti­vat­ing and emblem­at­ic of the cul­ture in Mia­mi, which he moved to from Chica­go. The chap­ter high­lights that Miami’s post-1980 trans­for­ma­tion was piv­otal to the unfold­ing nar­ra­tive of crime and fraud. Drug mon­ey and the influx of new demographics—especially fol­low­ing the Mariel Boatlift—corrupted the city’s insti­tu­tions, cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to fraud. Despite his charm and charis­ma, detailed through anec­dotes of lux­u­ry and obses­sion with his fam­i­ly, he was ulti­mate­ly engulfed by a cul­ture that reward­ed deceit and manip­u­la­tion.

The nar­ra­tive also dis­cuss­es how var­i­ous complicities—licenses, patient recruiters, and fal­si­fied records—facilitated the scheme. His close con­nec­tion with the Del­ga­do broth­ers fur­ther illus­trates how com­plex Medicare fraud net­works can oper­ate, allow­ing Esformes to prof­it mas­sive­ly through ille­gal prac­tices. In a stun­ning twist, the chap­ter notes that even as he faced charges, he main­tained a sense of invin­ci­bil­i­ty, believ­ing he had con­nec­tions that could save him.

The chap­ter explores broad­er soci­etal influ­ences on behav­ior, liken­ing Miami’s over­sto­ry to a for­est canopy that shapes the actions beneath it. Miami’s unique his­to­ry of cor­rup­tion and crime may part­ly explain Esformes’s even­tu­al moral decline. The nar­ra­tive ends with Esformes’s com­mu­ta­tion from Don­ald Trump, under­scor­ing the entan­gled nature of pow­er, crime, and redemp­tion in South Flori­da’s com­plex land­scape of influ­ence .