MAIN STREET — Just a little more than a year ago, Main Street furniture stripper Michael Miller drove with his buddies north of Santa Barbara, ate Mexican food and drank a beer. And then he went to federal prison.
Recently released from minimum security camp at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, Miller, the 42-year-old owner of furniture stripping shop Stripper Herk, is still stunned over how he wound up serving 10 1/2 months incarcerated for telling the truth.
Miller was sentenced in October of 2004 to a year and a day at Lompoc for illegally dumping methylene chloride into the sewer — a charge that was later reduced to a misdemeanor. He also was charged with a felony for keeping sealed 55-gallon barrels of the toxic substance at his business for longer than the 90 allow-
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 9, 2006. Read the original PDF.