A D.C. Superior Court judge has ruled that the developers who accused a city building inspector of extortion can’t move forward with a civil lawsuit against the District because the inspector remains under investigation by the FBI.
The federal investigation already has resulted in the conviction of one former Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs official.
Yaw Oteng-Agipong was sentenced to 60 days in prison for attempted bribery to lift the stop-work order on the $1.2 million reconstruction project along the 1100 block of Fifth Street Northwest.
This summer, Fifth Street developers Todd Zirkle and Vanessa Humphreys filed a civil suit seeking damages and accusing the city of illegally stopping the project.
They say Agipong and inspector Juan Scott tried to extort a bribe from them.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Maurice Ross ruled that the civil case should be held off until the FBI finishes its investigation of Scott. Ross ordered the District of Columbia to file a status report in December on whether Scott remains under investigation.
One year since Scott slapped the stop-work order on the project, the town house remains vacant and boarded. The District says the project remains in violation. Zirkle says their company is losing $700 a day and that the District is trying to bleed them out.
The FBI last fall wired Zirkle and Humphreys and began taping their conversations with Agipong.
Agipong told Zirkle that the developers could make their problems disappear if they paid $20,000, according to the affidavit.
Zirkle, working with the FBI, met with Agipong in a warehouse with $17,000 in cash and $3,000 check addressed to the DCRA, according to the affidavit.
Prosecutors said the inspector agreed to accept the bribe and, in one clandestine meeting, patted down Agipong and asked whether he wore a recording device. Prosecutors have not identified the inspector because he has not been charged.
A subsequent Examiner investigation found that before he joined the DCRA, Scott served four years in federal prison after he and his cousin, a D.C. police officer, were arrested in 1986 and charged with possession of $100,000 worth of cocaine, 17 rifles, 400 rounds of ammunition and a live hand grenade.
