Miami Vice

They’re known as the Jills. They’re two of the top realtors in the country, selling the most sought-after condos and mansions in Miami. Then a house went missing—and professional greed turned into outright extortion

- Mark Seal

The two women are wearing black, which is rare for them. They’re typically dressed in sunny colors, ushering their clients into Miami’s multi million-dollar mansions of glory. Their vibrant wardrobes and mile-wide smiles befit the No. 1 team in Miami real estate, brokers who have sold a staggering $3.4 billion worth of homes since 2005, making them the most successful residential agents in the national Coldwell Banker network: Jill Hertzberg and Jill Eber, better known to friends and foes alike as the Jills.

Today, though, they wear severe teacher’s spectacles and expressions as dark as their attire as they stand in a dreary Miami courtroom and attempt to persuade a judge to send a rival broker, Kevin Tomlinson, to prison for extortion.

Tomlinson “had the evidence on the Jills,” as he likes to say—proof of systematic market manipulation, a scheme that he and other Miami brokers claim they used to cheat competitors and clients alike. By tampering with the national computerized database that provides detailed information on every house on the market, they hid expired listings from their rivals and misled potential buyers about the value of their properties. Tomlinson detailed his allegations in a 500page report to the Miami Association of Realtors—a move that many brokers hoped would cost the Jills their licenses and perhaps even drive them out of the cutthroat world of Miami real estate.

Instead, the Jills have not only evaded any disciplinary or legal action, they actually turned the tables on Tomlinson, placing him at the defendant’s table. He sits there now, wearing a blue sports coat and a scowl, facing up to 30 years in prison. The Jills, as always, are doing the talking, urging the judge to throw the book at Tomlinson.