At least a dozen D.C. finance office workers have been given an ultimatum — resign or be fired — because their names appeared on checks written by the woman who masterminded the $48 million theft from the office, The Examiner has learned.
The employees received money between 2002 and 2007 from Harriette Walters, 51, who is sitting in a federal jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to leading the city’s largest public corruption scam, sources said.
The city employees’ names were handed over to the finance office by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to sources. Their names all appeared on checks written by Walters in those five years, the sources said.
They include a cash analyst and a tax division director, according to sources. The officials were brought into their bosses’ offices by internal investigators last week, showed copies of the checks and told to resign or face firing, a City Hall source said.
The firings and forced resignations represent D.C. Finance Officer Natwar Gandhi’s attempt to restore credibility to his office.
“Official action has been and will be taken at the appropriate time,” Gandhi’s spokesman, David Umansky, said in an e-mailed statement. He declined further comment. Walters told prosecutors she used a series of dummy companies to float tens of millions of dollars’ worth of phony property tax refunds in a scheme that stretched back decades.
She used the stolen money to finance a lavish lifestyle for her friends and family, with designer jewelry, top-of-the-line cars and orgiastic gambling junkets. She also showered her colleagues with gifts and cash — so much that she became known as “Mother Harriette,” the woman to see if you needed money.
Many tax office employees took advantage of Walters’ largesse. The recently sacked employees’ names were all on checks written by Walters between 2002 and 2007, sources told The Examiner.
Prosecutors couldn’t prove that those accepting money from Walters knew the money was stolen and have closed the investigation without charging any of those facing dismissal.
In those years, Walters wrote more than $1.2 million in checks to her co-workers, court papers state. Authorities believe that she was writing checks to colleagues for years before 2002, but bank records don’t go that far back, sources told The Examiner. Some public officials, such as D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, have wondered aloud whether “a culture of corruption” is eating away at city government.
Walters, nearly blind from glaucoma, has accepted a provisional plea agreement and, if a judge OK it, will spend 15 to 18 years in prison.
