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-Lurid Crime Tales-
D.C. Official Accused in $20M $44M Scheme
2007-12-16
A few notes: The missing amounts keep climbing; they seem to have settled around $44 Million. As far as we know. I am sorry about Natwar Gadhi's incompetence, we all thought he was doing a great job managing the District's finances. And finally, we had another case a few years ago that to my mind was even worse: the case of Barbara Bullock, who was the chairman of the Washington Teachers' Union. She embezzled more than $5 million from the teachers! They had a TV crew filming the perp walk of all her ill gotten gains from her house to the evidence van. But they didn't perp walk the things I wanted to see most: her dozens and dozens of wigs.
The courthouse files look like the Christmas list of a high-society fashion maven with a purse fetish: mink coats, jewelry, Faberge eggs, a Mercedes Benz and more than 100 handbags and wallets with designer names like Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton. Those are among the items the FBI found at the Washington home of Harriette Walters, who until recently was an $81,000-a-year city tax official.

Her salary was a pittance compared with the tens of millions of dollars prosecutors say she and at least five others stole in what may be the biggest embezzlement case in the city's history.

Authorities say Walters was the ringleader of a scheme in which she and the others wrote themselves bogus property-tax refund checks. The scam went on for seven years until a bank employee last summer noticed irregularities in the checks. The rip-offs were so brazen that one $346,000 check was made out to a fictitious company the embezzlers named "Bilkemor LLC."

The audacious scheme has been an embarrassment for the city's finance chief, Natwar Gandhi, who has been praised for helping to produce surpluses and strong bond ratings for Washington, a city that was headed toward insolvency in the 1990s after years of mismanagement.
Posted by:Fred

#6  re: #3.

tho, it got plenty of theory in it mooses! :)
Posted by: RD   2007-12-16 23:13  

#5  significant public transport to and from the city

Obviously you've never worked in South D.C.
Posted by: Pappy   2007-12-16 21:01  

#4  yeah great, room for more government buildings filled with more bureauocrats. Just what we need.
Posted by: Steve White   2007-12-16 17:09  

#3  Once again, I'll propose that the federal government buy up all of D.C. and make it nothing but the seat of the federal government, monuments and parks.

With no residences or private businesses except contract franchises and VIP hotels; few roads for only official vehicles, with most converted to pedestrian walkways; and significant public transport to and from the city.

There would be plenty of space for government building expansion, lots more open space for gatherings, much better security, and even things like moving sidewalks to quickly move large numbers of pedestrians around.

Washington D.C. would be prettier, cleaner, quieter, safer, with very little crime, much more tourist friendly, and more places to put monuments to great Americans and events.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2007-12-16 11:29  

#2  "It's remarkably brazen," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group.

"If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low crime rate." -- M. Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC
Posted by: Besoeker   2007-12-16 10:56  

#1  Big government lack of accountability + PC quota hire + third world ethics = Washington DC business as usual...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2007-12-16 09:16  

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