A former D.C. Department of Consumer of Regulatory Affairs employee was sentenced Tuesday to more than two years in prison for shaking down D.C. businesses.
Ikela M. Dean, a 32-year-old former clerk in the District’s construction licensing agency, was convicted in November of taking bribes in exchange for voiding bogus “late fees” against hotel projects in the city.
Recommended Stories
She was arrested in September 2007 after a yearlong FBI sting investigation and indicted on 14 counts of bribery, but U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton threw out 12 of the counts during the trial.
Walton on Tuesday ordered her to serve 27 months behind bars and three months supervised release.
“[Dean’s] conduct was not an isolated incident,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lionel Andre wrote in sentencing documents. “It was a scheme affecting multiple citizens who were compelled to pay cash in order to get a license to which they were entitled.”
Dean’s scheme fell apart after officials at the Omni Shoreham hotel in the Woodley Park area of Northwest told police that the business was forced to give in to her demands for cash to get a vital elevator certificate.
Prosecutors said they recorded at least three telephone calls with a hotel employee, and videotaped two meetings with an undercover FBI agent who pretended to work for the Omni hotel.
Over the phone, Dean told an Omni employee that the hotel could get an application for a cigar bar, if it paid the standard $475 fee for a temporary license and also paid $1,275 in cash as a “late fee.”
The agent supplied Dean with paperwork, money for the temporary license fee plus the $1,275.
She returned with two receipts. The one for the temporary license was marked with official D.C. stamp, but the receipt for the “late fee” was stamped paid, but not with an official validation.
Dean was arrested outside the DCRA offices that day but FBI agents did not find the $1,275. A few days later, the money was recovered in a DCRA restroom when a District employee reached for the toilet paper and instead found the FBI’s unmarked bills, prosecutors said.
Dean was fired last year from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
