A Clinton real estate agent on Wednesday became the ninth person to plead guilty in the District’s largest-ever public corruption scandal.
Alethia Grooms, 52, a close friend of alleged mastermind and D.C. tax office manager Harriette Walters, admitted to accepting about $650,000 for her role in the scheme to embezzle nearly $50 million from the city’s coffers.
Grooms is likely to face less than four years in prison, federal prosecutors said. She is believed to have joined the conspiracy in its infant stages, authorities said.
Grooms and Walters met in the 1980s as students at the University of the District of Columbia and began frequenting “Vegas nights” at local firehouses.
According to authorities, around 1989, Walters told Grooms that she was able to obtain fraudulent D.C. property tax refund checks and asked whether Grooms knew anyone who could cash them.
Over nearly two decades, Grooms helped launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent checks through dummy corporations, documents said.
When the scheme began unraveling last summer, authorities said, Walters called Grooms in tears, and they agreed for Grooms to use her graphic design business to create bogus documents.
Grooms on Wednesday also admitted to helping two tax office employees commit mortgage fraud. Grooms lied on federal housing applications and created bogus income statements to help the women obtain favorable loans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
