I wrote a few weeks ago about Harriet Walters and Dianne Gustus of the Washington DC ‘ Office of Tax and Revenue who scammed US taxpayers out of betweeen $20 and $30 million by issuing bogus property tax refunds. You might ask yourself how a relatively low-level employee might get away carrying loads of cash out of the public coffers. Easy – everyone in the Washington DC government are corrupt.<\/p>\n
“How dare you say such a thing, paint with such a broad brush over every single District government employee” you might be asking. Well, judge for yourself. I found this in a Washington Examiner<\/a> article from earlier in the week;<\/p>\n The 51-year-old Walters was known as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mother Harriette\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in her office \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the woman to see for emergency loans, designer clothes and accessories, even floor-level Wizards tickets, three sources with direct knowledge of the widening federal and local investigations said.<\/p>\n She also paid out large cash rewards, in increments of up to $20,000 at a time, to fellow workers who helped her edit and complete her paperwork, sources said. Her annual salary was $81,000.<\/p>\n According the source, a few months before her Nov. 7 arrest, Walters was called into a meeting with Terez Badger, a chief in the tax office, and Susan Lee, a deputy chief and Walter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s direct supervisor. They told her to stop giving out the presents and taking her co-workers on shopping sprees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Everyone in her office knew she was stealing – how else could she afford to hand out what amounted to 1\/4 of her annual salary for doing her work around the office? And everyone knew her reputation for handing out goodies – everyone was in on it. But as long as they got their cut, they didn’t care. No one blew the whistle on her, no one asked any hard questions -\u00c2\u00a0her supervisors\u00c2\u00a0just told her to stop buying gifts for everyone. Not wondering for a minute where she got her money.<\/p>\n See, Mother Walters was cutting property tax refund checks that never made it to the people for whom they were intended (whether they deserved refunds or not isn’t clear yet).<\/p>\n