Baltimore’s biggest minority demolition company, P&J Contracting, has sued Milton Tillman III for more than $1 million, saying he did not make good on a 2018 promissory note pledging to pay it $25,000 monthly.

But reached at a P&J-linked concrete company where he apparently works, Tillman says he knows nothing about the alleged debt, then tells a reporter he’ll get back to him because Pless Jones Jr., P&J’s owner, “just walked in.”

The unusual debt collection case is the latest chapter in a long-running drama involving two prominent and politically connected Baltimore families and businesses. In an email, Jones says the collection action relates to a series of challenges his companies have faced, and broadly hints they’re politically motivated.

Jones’ father founded P&J, City Hall’s go-to contractor for years.

Dubbed the “Demoltion King” by The Brew, the senior Pless Jones received tens of millions of dollars to take down blighted or partially collapsed buildings in East and West Baltimore. And he hired former Mayor Sheila Dixon after her 2010 plea bargain as marketing director for his Maryland Minority Contractors Association, a position Dixon still holds.

Through MMCA and his various companies, Jones has fundraised for mayors and other elected officials regularly.

Tillman, known as “Moe,” is the scion and namesake of the legendary Odell’s nightclub owner and 4 Aces Bail Bonds founder, who was convicted of a federal bribery charge in the 1990s, and tax and wire fraud charges in 2011.

In the 2011 case, Moe Tillman was ordered to pay $12,500 in restitution t0 the IRS and perform 100 hours of community service.

The financial entanglement between the two families was not previously known publicly.

“Weaponized regulations”

Jones Jr. bought his father’s business in 2020. That same year, he and his wife, Elizabeth, announced plans for a $200 million development on a mostly derelict former industrial park owned by his father in northeast Baltimore.

The plans were heavily hyped by the media. “We were motivated by trying to come up with a plan that not only mitigates poverty and distress in urban neighborhoods but also creates economic systems,” Jones Jr. told The Sun. “We are focusing on equality and on access at every level: the development level, the community level, the individual level,” Elizabeth added in an interview with the Afro.

Their ambitions to convert a factory site with piles of rubble into a job training academy, single-family homes and health, wellness and sports facilities have since stalled.

Jones blames dark forces, and says the Tillman lawsuit is related.

“The $1.1 million claim isn’t pin money,” he wrote to The Brew. “It stems from a broken agreement involving P&J that dates back to 2018 – part of a larger, painful arc involving a failed buyout, unfulfilled promises and deeper consequences that have rippled through not just our company, but the redevelopment and workforce training projects we’ve been trying to deliver for Baltimore.”

In a series of emails, Jones says his ambitions have been hampered by “weaponized regulations” by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), “politically connected developers” and an effort to block his ambitions “led in part by the state’s most powerful lobbyist, who happens to be related to the parties in the P&J transaction” – an apparent reference to lawyer-lobbyist Lisa Harris Jones, Pless Jones Sr.’s former wife.

“What began as a family business issue has become something far larger: a case study in how city agencies, personal agendas, and entrenched power structures can quietly but effectively sabotage economic progress in distressed communities – especially when those communities try to build something new,” he wrote.

Lisa Harris Jones says Jones Jr.’s allegations are baffling.

“I haven’t spoken with him in I don’t recall when,” she said in a phone call from her Old Goucher law office. “We don’t represent Pless Jones, and we don’t represent anyone that has any concerns with him. We don’t represent Tillman. We don’t represent anyone related to Tillman. The short answer is I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Sue the Bank

Jones promised several times to speak in order to flesh out this story over the phone, but did not do so during the week leading up the posting of this article, saying he was waiting for permission from his lawyer.

Court filings in the debt case and another lawsuit tell the story.

The debt case appears at first straightforward. According to Jones’s complaint, Tillman signed a note in April of 2018 promising to pay P&J $1.2 million at 5% interest, or $25,715 per month, but stopped paying in November of 2021, leaving unpaid principle and interest of $1,141,523.84 as of last week.

An affidavit attached to the suit says Tillman’s last known address is 3020 West Cold Spring Lane.

Pless Jones Sr. sold that property in 2022 to a company called Express Concrete. According to Robert Fulton Dashiell, Moe Tillman’s lawyer (who is also listed as “of counsel” to Harris Jones & Malone, Lisa Harris Jones’ lobbying outfit), Tillman arranged to take part-ownership of the concrete company with the $1 million note.

Meanwhile, Jones Sr. had been cited by MDE for solid waste violations on the property (and two others) in 2012, leading to a series of consent decrees that P&J consistently violated.

In 2020, when Jones Jr. moved to buy his ailing father out, the consent decree was still in effect.

Jones Jr. later sued Fulton Bank, which funded the transaction, and the law firm Gordon Feinblatt, which represented Jones Jr., claiming the bank illegally forced him to sign the consent decree by advising him to hire the law firm, which also worked for the bank.

“Defendant Fulton Bank fraudulently and erroneously led Mr. Jones to believe that retaining the services of Defendants Gordon Feinblatt and  [Feinblatt attorney Todd] Chason was a necessary requirement to close the loan,” the amended complaint, filed last summer, says.

“As part of their representation of Mr. Jones, Defendants Gordon Feinblatt and Chason engaged in discussions with MDE, outside of the presence of Mr. Jones, during which Defendant MDE requested that Mr. Jones be added to as a party to a Second Consent Decree; Defendant Fulton Bank also participated in these discussions with MDE.

“These discussions were conspiratorial in nature for the purpose of coercing Mr. Jones to enter into a fraudulent financial transaction, become a party to the Second Consent Decree, and to intentionally misinform Mr. Jones about his legal position in the transaction, thereby depriving him of his rights under the law.”

The suit claims that, by making Jones Jr. a party to the state environmental enforcement action, the bank set him up to fail, costing the company money it did not actually owe and pinching its profit and revenue potential.

In fact, it is routine for the buyers of any company to assume its legal responsibilities, including debts and environmental obligations, the MDE’s lawyers noted in response to the suit. If a company could escape civil liabilities simply by changing owners, regulations and court judgments would largely be mooted.

The consent decree requires P&J to obtain proper permits, clean up spilled oil and control runoff from 3020 West Cold Spring Lane and take specific actions on the two other properties.

Dismissed Allegations

The suit has not gone smoothly for Jones.

Numerous counts, including all of those targeting MDE, were dismissed by the judge, and the remaining defendants are now requesting sanctions against him and his lawyer, Tiffani Collins, for refusing to respond to discovery requests.

“It is unclear whether this was mere negligence or a misstatement to cover the fact that Plaintiff’s filing was late,” Feinblatt said in a response filed last Wednesday to an apparently mis-filed response to its initial request for sanctions. “In any event, Plaintiff’s responses are not just a day late – they are also, to put it plainly, more than a few dollars short.”

Tillman returned a phone message left with Express Concrete last Thursday saying, “I don’t owe him a dollar. I wasn’t even part of the deal.”

Asked what deal, Tillman said, “I don’t know what deal. I don’t know what this is about.”

When the reporter asked for his email to send him the complaint, Tillman said he’d call back because Jones had just arrived.

“I’m in the room with him right now.”

Attorney Dashiell then called to say it’s all a misunderstanding.

“The debt was paid in full almost a year and a half ago. I have that from the former owner of the company, Pless Jones Sr. He was the owner of the company when the transactions occurred,” Dashiell said.

The $1 million loan was part of a deal transferring the concrete company to new owners, according to Dashiell, making Tillman a part owner of it. MDE has released the property from its regulatory action, the lawyer added.

Jones Jr. denied Dashiell’s and Tillman’s claims, saying he spoke to Tillman for an hour after he hung up with The Brew, and Tillman had acknowledged the debt.

In two subsequent emails, Jones wrote:

“What I can say is that Robert Dashiell has been involved in every case and on both sides, relative to me and P&J. I am curious to find out who are pulling the strings as his moves are always to the detriment of me specifically. $35 million in funds were approved for our development project, but there are allegations that he and the No. 1 lobbyist in the state have discouraged city officials from endorsing the project officially, which the private investors need it to be so to release the funding.”

Tillman, for his part, says the deal never involved P&J Contracting, only Jones Sr.

“I have a notarized letter” attesting that it was paid in full, he told The Brew in a phone call.

Jones Jr. is “failing in business,” Tillman said, “and he’s trying to blame everyone else. Blaming people for his downfall.”