DC’s tax scam winding down

Some of you may not have heard, but the DC government discovered last year that a small gang of their bureaucrats have been stealing money from taxpayer coffers for decades to the tune of nearly $50 million.  Harriet Walters and some of her friends and workmates in the DC Tax and Revenue office siphoned off phony tax rebate checks, most recently in $400k chunks. In fact, when DC decided to tighten security in their procedures, it was Harriet Walters, the ringleader who designed the system intended to stop her.

How did she get caught? Was it an internal audit when the new administration came in last year? Was it one of her fellow employees who noticed her lavish spending when Walters paid Tax Office workers out of her pocket to do her job around the office? Nope, it was because of a confrontation at a SunTrust bank branch. From the Washington Post;

The scheme began to unravel with a June 18, 2007, transaction at a SunTrust bank in Maryland. [Walter’s co-conspirator Jayrece] Turnbull deposited a $410,000 refund check into an account there and a week later wrote a $200,000 check on it in an effort to transfer money to another account at Bank of America, prosecutors said. But SunTrust challenged Turnbull’s authority to make the transfer.

Instead of backing off, Turnbull insisted that she was entitled to the money. She had a lawyer draft a letter to the bank, and she and another co-conspirator allegedly forged documents purporting to prove her right to the money.

The bank stood its ground and contacted the FBI, touching off an investigation that led to a wave of firings at the District’s Office of Tax and Revenue and a string of arrests in the District and in Maryland, where many of the bank transactions took place.

The reason authorities estimate the amount Walters and her crew stole from taxpayers is because they can’t be sure how much money was lost, and they don’t know where it went. No one noticed that the money was even missing. And Walters is only facing 15-18 years in jail…not even the amount of time she’d been living high on the hog on her ill-gotten booty.

And the worst part? No one in DC is really all that upset that a group of low-level bureaucrats were able to abscond with money meant to pay for the education of children, to feed the hungry or any of the myriad of other excuses for which Liberals tell us we should pay taxes. That’s how much government cares about your money.

And in the comments section of the Washington Post story reflects perfectly the attitudes in DC of the residents;

Are they any different from the scam artists of wall street…why are they left off the hook? The dream team needs jail time.

Ms. Turnbull was subjected to racial, gender and socio-economic profiling by the bank. That started the whole thing unraveling.

Sweet.

Category: Politics