The $50 million that a former D.C. tax office manager ripped off from the District could have modernized 22 public schools, helped 1,276 first-time homebuyers or made the Anacostia swimmable by 2032, prosecutors said in sentencing documents Tuesday.
Harriette Walters, the mastermind behind the largest financial corruption scandal in the District’s history, was scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday. Walters is the last of 13 co-conspirators to be sentenced.
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Prosecutors have asked for a prison term of 18 years, comparing her theft to that of white-collar swindlers like Jeffrey Skilling of Enron and Bernard Ebbers of Worldcom.
The 36-page sentencing memorandum takes a look back at the financial struggles that the District of Columbia endured over two decades while Walters enjoyed million-dollar spending sprees and lavish gambling junkets.
“She was able to do that because, at root, she cares only about herself,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch.
Prosecutors disputed Walters’ claim that she was “a benefactor” to many friends and family, and gave away much of the money she stole.
“[Walters] was no modern-day Robin Hood: she was not stealing from the rich, she was stealing from the residents of the District of Columbia who were already in poverty,” Lynch said.
In 2000, a year when Walters embezzled $3.2 million, she wrote only $228 in checks to charity, and nearly half was to an organization run by one of her co-conspirators, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, between 2001 and 2007, Walters spent at least $1.3 million at Neiman Marcus and $1 million at an Annapolis jeweler, documents said.
Many of her friends that she supposedly helped will spend their next years in prison for their roles in the scheme, and nearly 30 former colleagues have lost their jobs over the scandal, prosecutors said.
Lynch tried to put Walters’ theft into concrete terms.
Walters’ two-decade scheme went on while the District’s financial situation was so dire that Congress had to take control of the city’s purse strings, prosecutors said.
From 1995 to 2001, during the period that the District was under the control board, Walters embezzled $8.4 million.
During that time, D.C. General Hospital, two health clinics and a drug treatment center were forced to close because the District could no longer pay to keep them open.
And District employees were being furloughed in 1992 and 1993 to close a $36 million budget shortfall.
In 2004, the year Walters stole $8.6 million from the District’s treasury, a bill to find shelter for the city’s 14,000 homeless men, women and children failed for lack of money, prosecutors said.
