Before the law degree
Adrian Middleton worked as a stop-work order investigator for the Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Workers' Compensation, Bureau of Compliance. He walked onto job sites, interviewed crews, checked the coverage databases, served and posted stop-work orders, served business records requests, and calculated the penalties that followed. He knows what the investigator is looking at, what the field interview is for, and how a worksheet is built, because he built them.
The Department trained him as a forensic auditor: tracing payroll through bank records, cancelled checks and check-cashing stores when employers thought it was invisible. He worked with the Division of Insurance Fraud on large payroll check-cashing schemes, the cases where a civil penalty becomes a felony prosecution. He served on the Department of Business and Professional Regulation's unlicensed activity task force and worked with multiple other state agencies on construction enforcement.
Now
As an attorney with Sword & Shield, PLLC in Tallahassee, Adrian represents Florida employers served with stop-work orders, business records requests and orders of penalty assessment: the records decision, the penalty audit, the conditional release, the Chapter 120 petition, and the two cases that run alongside, the mandatory DBPR referral for licensed contractors and the criminal referral for knowing violations.
A large part of the firm's practice is administrative and professional license defense before DBPR, the Department of Health, DFS and the other Florida agencies, so a contractor whose stop-work order has become a licensing complaint is represented in both matters by the same lawyer. The firm also handles criminal defense, which matters when the investigator starts asking about intent.
Why that combination matters here
- He reads the Department's Penalty Calculation Worksheet the way the auditor who wrote it does, and finds the lines that are wrong.
- He knows what the investigator's field notes say before the Department produces them.
- He knows which records patterns get referred to the fraud investigators, and screens for them before anything is produced.
- He knows what the DBPR referral turns into, and prepares the Chapter 440 case so it does not damage the license.
- He is in Tallahassee, where the Department, the Division of Administrative Hearings and DBPR all are.
Availability
Adrian answers his cell, (850) 766-6825, 24 hours a day. The consultation is free. If the investigator is on your site, call while they are still there.
Education, bar admissions and years of experience are available on request from the firm.