An Oxon Hill man was sentenced to spend the next four years behind prison bars after he pretended to be a federal prosecutor to get misdemeanor cases dropped, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.
Twenty-seven-year-old Charles A. Barnes had been arrested by Howard University Police on charges of theft, credit card fraud and assaulting a police officer when he tried to pull his stunt.
According to prosecutors, on the morning of Aug. 3, 2009, Barnes called the investigator working the credit card theft case and falsely identified himself as an assistant U.S. attorney.
Barnes told investigator Robert Thompson that he was trying both cases, and that the trial dates have been changed. Barnes also asked for the phone numbers of the witnesses in both cases so he could call them himself and let them know about the date changes.
But Thompson had immediately recognized Barnes’ voice and began to record the conversation with a handheld tape recorder. Thompson provided Barnes with a telephone number that he said belonged to a witness in the credit card fraud case. In reality the phone number belonged to a prepaid telephone that belonged to the police department.
Barnes hung up with Thompson and immediately called the number of the supposed witness.
On the other end, D.C. police officer Chris Downs answered the call and pretended to be the witness Barnes was seeking.
Barnes told Downs that he was the assistant U.S. attorney handling both cases, that they had been rescheduled and the witness would not be needed in court.
Authorities later confronted Barnes about his scheme and he agreed to a plea deal. Barnes pleaded to obstruction of justice and to assaulting a police officer, and prosecutors dropped the other charges.
Barnes’ was one of two sentencings in D.C. Superior Court on Friday involving defendants who posed as someone else.
Benjamin Elias Brown Jr., 36, of Forestville, was sentenced to more than two years in prison for faking his own death to avoid a court appearance.
Brown had a falsified death certificate sent to his probation officer saying that he had been fatally shot in D.C.
The scheme unraveled when the probation officer verified with D.C. police that there was no homicide on the date that Brown was supposedly killed. The Department of Health Vital Records Office also determined that Brown’s death certificate was a fraud, and belonged to someone else.
