A federal judge sentenced a former District of Columbia government building official to two months in prison for trying to bribe a former colleague.
Retired D.C. Department and Regulatory Affairs engineer Yaw Agipong told U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina that he was sorry and ashamed that he promised to pay a DCRA construction inspector $2,000 to lift a stop-work order on a project on the 1100 block of Fifth Street NW.
Agipong was sentenced to 60 days in prison following six months of home detention.
Prosecutors say in court documents that the construction inspector agreed to accept the bribe and, in one clandestine meeting, patted down Agipong and asked his former colleague if he was wearing a recording device. U.S. attorneys have not identified the inspector because he has not been charged.
The FBI began taping Agipong’s conversations with the Fifth Street developers after the developers accused him and the head of the D.C. construction inspection unit, Juan Scott, of conspiring to extort them out of thousands of dollars, according to an affidavit signed by the developers.
Agipong told one of the developers that he could make their problems disappear if they paid $20,000, according to the affidavit. One of the developers met Agipong in a warehouse with $17,000 in cash and a $3,000 check addressed to the DCRA, according to the affidavit. The FBI took Agipong into custody but did not arrest him at the time.
Before he joined the DCRA, Scott served four years in federal prison after he and his cousin 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.
