Mermaids’ workplace feud escalates into investigations of BSO lieutenant, federal lawsuit

The saga began with a feud between mermaids and, years after it began, has led to a possible criminal indictment of a veteran Broward Sheriff’s Office lieutenant.

Three burlesque-performing mermaids are suing Sheriff’s Office Lt. Jeffrey Mellies, alleging he violated federal law by searching their names for unofficial purposes in a law enforcement database that contains sensitive personal information. The allegations contained in the federal lawsuit are also being reviewed by the Broward State Attorney’s Office.

Mellies’ searches of The Wreck Bar mermaids Janelle Smiley, 39; Whitney Fair, 42; and the woman who runs the show, Wendy Marina Anderson, 51, were done with “malicious intent,” the complaint alleges, done about the same time an adversarial relationship between Fair and Mellies’ wife, who also was in the show, hit a breaking point.

The lawsuit alleges Mellies searched for information about the women “to retaliate against them” for their issues with him and his wife, Mia Mellies. Mellies, in a statement to Internal Affairs in 2021, refuted that, stating his searches weren’t for any personal reason and his wife never asked him to do it.

Mellies documented the searches under a “criminal investigation” code. But Sheriff’s Office’s Internal Affairs records said none of the women were under any criminal investigation.

“Everything’s a potential criminal investigation until it’s not, in my opinion,” Mellies said in his Internal Affairs statement in October 2021, before the lawsuit was filed in February 2022 and before the Sheriff’s Office’s investigation was turned over to the State Attorney’s Office in April 2022.

The women who are suing Mellies said in their Internal Affairs statements that they’ve felt violated and on edge. To Mellies, their complaints to his employer were nothing more than “a mean girls type of thing,” he told Internal Affairs, with women who want to see him fired.

Mellies was suspended for five days without pay once the internal investigation concluded. It remains to be seen whether Mellies may face any criminal charges.

The Wreck Bar

The Wreck Bar inside of the historic B Ocean Resort is where the mermaids perform each weekend. The root of the bad blood varies based on who’s recounting the story, but what is undisputed is that the drama started there, inside the hotel, shaped like a ship, formerly known as the Yankee Clipper.

The 4-star resort appears as if it emerged from the Atlantic and ended up beached in its place. It sits just off the sand of Fort Lauderdale’s beach, a ship’s wheel visible through glass windows at the bow of the building.

The underwater mermaid shows have lured patrons for more than a decade. Behind the dimly-lit bar’s rows of liquor bottles, patrons get a glimpse into the world of twirling, bedazzled, bikini-top-wearing, siren-esque mermaids through portholes into the blue water of the pool.

The mermaids are professionals. Holding their breath, impressing the onlookers with their tricks, they appear as if they truly are the tantalizing creatures of the deep. No expression on their face, no sign that they’ve been holding their breath, should break that fantasy, Anderson said in an interview about the show shared on YouTube.

Fair and Smiley have performed there for years and continue to today, their attorney Gary Kollin told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Mellies’ wife used to perform there, too.

Mellies, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office for over two decades, would often attend the shows at The Wreck Bar in the two or three years his wife worked there. He helped set up props, acted as “quasi volunteer security,” he said in his Internal Affairs statement, to watch for potential customers who had a few too many tiki cocktails.

Fair told Internal Affairs investigators that the group of at least a dozen women were acquaintances and went to the Mellieses’ home a few times. She said she wouldn’t describe any of the relationships as “deep.”

The Mellieses appeared to think more of the relationships they’d built there, according to Mellies’ Internal Affiars statement. He said he and his wife hosted the performers at their home, and spent several thousand dollars designing costumes and “helping the girls out.”

“All these women were our friends …” he said.

The animosity among the women started when management asked his wife to take over the show, which would mean ousting Anderson, according to the back story Mellies gave to Internal Affairs.

“And this started the downward spiral,” he said.

Fair, Smiley and Anderson made no mention in their statements of Mia Mellies becoming a potential manager. Anderson still runs the show today, Kollin said.

In her Internal Affairs statement, Anderson said the Mellieses “were trying to shoehorn in to do more, to be involved more in my show without my being aware.”

Smiley described to Internal Affairs the problems at The Wreck Bar as a “clique going on between the — the glamorous mermaids, if you will. The mean girls, if you will.”

Fair told Internal Affairs the tension between Mia Mellies and her had been building up for a while in their time working together. The tension exploded one day in an argument, as Fair and Mia Mellies were getting ready to dive into the water in their shimmering tops and tails to face the guests through the portholes.

“And then I stupidly said, ‘Yeah, why didn’t you lose a few pounds and then call me,’ which I know is terrible,” Fair said. “I would never say that. She was always saying, ‘I need to lose a few pounds. I need to lose a few pounds.’ If she was saying anything else, I would’ve said anything else. I just snapped because it had been, like, months of this building up.”

From the other mermaids’ reactions, Fair knew she crossed a line, she told Internal Affairs.

Anderson said in her Internal Affairs interview that she fired Mia Mellies in August 2018 after her fight with Fair.

“I realized this is — it just can’t go on anymore because she’s been alienating some employees,” Anderson said about her firing of Mia Mellies. “She’s been intimidating, he’s intimidating — intimidating people …”

Mia Mellies did not return a voicemail seeking comment.

Michael Piper, one of the attorneys representing Mellies in the civil case, said in an emailed statement to the South Florida Sun Sentinel: “As lawyers, our benchmarks of professionalism include respect for and deference to our established civil and criminal judicial processes. A lawyer fictionalizing a public narrative and fomenting a salacious interest in the fiction to influence pending or potential litigation compromises those benchmarks. We will not be a part of that.”

Mellies’ criminal defense attorney did not return a voicemail or email seeking comment.

A mermaid’s intuition

Mellies said “a lot of different suspicions started arising” in the time he became acquainted with his wife’s fellow mermaids. He said Fair “never had any identification” and “never talked about her personal life,” according to his Internal Affairs statement transcript.

“She was living in a one-bedroom house, which was a pool house, basically, um, with no telephone, no anything. So I said to myself, ‘You know what? I’ve been around a long time. This isn’t normal. This woman’s hiding from something.’ So I had reason to believe that she may have had warrants, and I wanted to know what was going on with her,” Mellies said.

Mellies said in his Internal Affairs statement he didn’t recall searching Fair in the Driver and Vehicle Identification Database, known as DAVID, but that he asked an investigative aide to search her in a different database, which is linked to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. The Sheriff’s Office said in their Internal Affairs records that “Mellies conducted 23 illegal DAVID searches” among the three women.

“At no time was anyone under a criminal investigation,” Sheriff’s Office records said.

DAVID compiles “highly restricted personal information,” including a person’s photo, Social Security number and medical information, according to the lawsuit complaint. Maintained by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, users are prompted to accept a legal disclaimer, acknowledging that the data in the system is “sensitive and privileged information and shall be handled accordingly” and that unauthorized uses include searches for personal reasons, according to records obtained from the Sheriff’s Office.

Unauthorized uses of the database could lead to civil or criminal proceedings, the disclaimer says. News reports across the state have revealed law enforcement and other officials misusing the system, and lawsuits on similar accusations have been filed in years past against several South Florida cities.

A traffic stop of an off-duty Miami officer made by Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Donna Watts in 2011 that made national news led to a similar lawsuit in federal court. Watts said after she cited the officer, she was threatened online reportedly by law enforcement officers, and other law enforcement officers started pulling troopers over without cause, according to Watts’ lawsuit complaint in federal court.

“Trooper Watts was unpleasantly surprised to discover that between October 2011 and January 19, 2012, well over 88 law enforcement officers from 25 different agencies had viewed her private driver’s license information more than 200 times,” her lawsuit complaint said.

She lost the only part of her lawsuit that made it to court after the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the cities of Hollywood, Lauderhill, Margate and Miami paid several-thousand-dollar settlements, the Sun Sentinel previously reported.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law in 2021 on the use of DAVID, setting a fine of as much as $2,000 for anyone who misuses it and requiring officers to be trained on proper use, limits on its use and the penalties for violations.

Mellies said he searched Smiley in DAVID because he believed based on conversations that she may have been driving with a suspended license, according to the transcript of his Internal Affairs statement. He told Smiley her license was valid, “but if you keep wrecking into other cars, it’s going to get suspended so you better relax.”

He said he searched Anderson because he saw a car that he believed was hers speeding in Pompano Beach late one night, where he knew she lived. He drove around neighborhoods searching for the car and when he found it, searched the license plate number to confirm it was hers, the interview transcript said.

Fair first began to suspect Mellies was gathering information about people when his wife shared mugshots of one of the former swimmer’s ex-boyfriends, Fair said in her Internal Affairs statement. Then references to trouble from Fair’s past that she hadn’t revealed were posted online, after Mia Mellies was fired. Anderson said Mellies made posts on social media about her, too, she told Internal Affairs.

Sheriff’s Office records show Lt. Mellies in two Facebook comments in 2018 and 2020 referenced a felony marijuana charge against Fair in Oklahoma when she was 18. The case was expunged, and Fair told Internal Affairs investigators she hadn’t told anyone she worked with about it.

She called officials in Oklahoma to question how someone could find out about it.

“The only way anyone could access that is law enforcement,” Fair said she was told.

Her suspicion was confirmed when she requested public records from the state dating back to when she first started swimming at The Wreck Bar and found that Mellies searched for information about her, according to the Internal Affairs records.

Mellies searched for information on Fair in DAVID a month before his wife was fired, she told Internal Affairs. He searched Smiley in March 2018 and Anderson in September 2018, records included in the lawsuit show.

The boyfriend of another performer found Mellies searched for his information, too, in February 2018, the complaint said. He is not a plaintiff, though the allegations pertaining to those searchers were the subject of a second Internal Affairs investigation in 2022.

The Sheriff’s Office conducted an audit in June 2022 of Mellies’ DAVID searches during the second Internal Affairs investigation and found that he had also searched for information on himself, his wife and his daughter in 2018.

Mellies said in his decades of law enforcement, he had never misused any of the databases, according to Internal Affairs records, then later acknowledged that the searches of his wife and daughter were “for personal use.”

His wife decided not to provide a statement, Mellies explained in an email to the Internal Affairs investigator.

“Although she appreciates the opportunity to finally be able to speak on this subject, we have decided that this is not the appropriate venue at this time,” Mellies wrote.

Kollin, the attorney representing Fair, Smiley and Anderson, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he believed the five-day suspension without pay Mellies received from Internal Affairs was too light.

“It’s a slap on the wrist. Having a disciplinary level of so low for doing this, a police officer would not really worry about his career or her career if they’re caught. They can take the chance and it’s unlikely they’ll ever be caught doing it,” Kollin said.

Neighbor disputes

The war of words didn’t end when Mia Mellies was fired. The animosity would only continue — when the Mellies and Fair became next-door neighbors.

Mellies said in his Internal Affairs statement he and his wife weren’t aware they had moved in next door to Fair in November 2019.

“We had no idea that she lived there, none,” he said. “We saw her out walking the dog and then my wife was like, ‘Oh my God, this is — she lives next door. She’s in the pool house.’”

Fort Lauderdale Police reports detail disputes over Fair’s outdoor lighting, Mellies complaining that a Ring camera was pointed into his yard, invading his privacy, and Fair reporting she had been “attacked” on social media and that Mellies came onto her property several times, once scaling a fence and ladder to put tape over her security camera and another time using a rake to pull down a trespass sign, according to the incident reports.

Fair told an officer that the Mellieses came onto her property on a night in April 2021, complaining about blue-and-purple landscaping lights she set up for Easter. A friend who was with Fair started recording the argument because he was “fearful that it would escalate and he felt threatened,” according to the report.

The Mellieses couldn’t be seen in the dark video, but the voices of a man and woman were shouting insults.

“It looks like a whorehouse,” one of them shouted.

“I can’t stand you, I hope you f—— die,” one of them said.

Mellies told Internal Affairs that Fair “instigated” him and his wife.

The Sheriff’s Office shortly after that argument ordered Mellies to stop “any inappropriate behavior,” including going onto Fair’s property, harassing, threatening, annoying, intimidating or calling her. He was not to contact her in any way.

The same day that the Sheriff’s Office ordered Mellies to leave Fair alone, Mellies called Fort Lauderdale Police. He wanted to get his and his wife’s side of the story on the record, the incident report said.

Mellies had a different perspective on the origin of the problems; they started with Fair’s bright motion-detecting light “constantly flashing,” disturbing his family, he said. He said he asked the property owner to move them, to no avail.

When he got a closer look at the light, having climbed over the fence, he noticed a Ring camera, the incident report said, that he said had a direct view into his yard.

“I’m not going to bulls— you,” Mellies told one Fort Lauderdale officer who responded to his home in April 2021, which was recorded on the officer’s body-worn-camera. “That was probably not the brightest thing to do,” referring to climbing the fence. “But again, my intent was just to unscrew the lights.”

He put tape over it. The tape was gone the next day. The camera was eventually lowered, with a Fort Lauderdale officer writing in the incident report that it seemed the camera was there to record audio, “as one can assume the video feature is now useless.”

Several months later, Mellies called police again. An officer wrote in her report that when she saw the call, she instantly recognized the address and her past lengthy reports about the Mellieses’ and Fair’s issues.

Proving legitimate purpose

“Rather traumatic” is how the problems have been for Fair, she told Internal Affairs. She hoped Mellies would face a more serious consequence.

“People shouldn’t be able to access people’s private information just because they feel it a win whether they think someone’s good looking or they don’t like someone or they’re curious. That shouldn’t be happening. And it makes me really upset that it wasn’t caught. That he’s been able to do this to me and other people I know. And I’m sure there’s many others,” Fair said.

The Sheriff’s Office forwarded a copy of its investigation of Mellies’ searches for information on the mermaids to the State Attorney’s Office in April 2022, Carey Codd, a BSO spokesperson said in an email.

The civil proceedings have been put on hold several times as the State Attorney’s Office has continued reviewing, with a federal judge agreeing to the most recent delay in late June. The proceedings have been delayed until at least Sept. 5, court records show.

“They have some solace in the fact that there’s a civil lawsuit pending, but they have a high level of anxiety because the State Attorney’s Office has delayed its decision for a year,” attorney Kollin said.

The Sheriff’s Office was initially a defendant in the lawsuit, alleged to have failed to train and supervise employees’ use of DAVID, creating a custom of misuse of the system within the agency. A judge’s order dismissed the Sheriff’s Office from the suit in August 2022, determining that the plaintiffs did not allege facts that showed there was a pattern of past similar incidents or pattern of past complaints about employees misusing DAVID.

Mellies in his Internal Affairs statement was asked if there had been a reason their names were part of an investigation he was conducting in his official duty, according to the interview transcript.

“Well, in anything that I do is official,” Mellies said. “I’m a police officer 24/7.”

Mellies is currently on full duty, the Sheriff’s Office said. The State Attorney’s Office, through a spokesperson, said it does not comment on cases that are under review.

“The central issue in both actions will be proving whether Mellies had a legitimate law enforcement purpose for utilizing the DAVID system” to get the women’s personal information, Mellies’ attorney Tamatha Alvarez wrote in one of the recent motions to postpone the proceedings.

Asked if he’d do anything differently in his Internal Affairs interview, Mellies said, “Nope. Absolutely not.”