Breaking: Walters Gets 17.5 Years
Harriette Walters, mastermind of a nearly two-decade tax scam that cost D.C. taxpayers almost $48 million, will get 17 years and six months for her crimes, a sentence handed down by federal judge Emmet G. Sullivan. The 52-year-old will also have to make restitution for the $48 million that she stole. In addition, she has to pay $12 million in tax payments to the federal government and $3.2 million to the District. Walters is a former mid-level manager in the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue who engineered a complicated tax-assessment scam.
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4:10 pm
Judge Sullivan is a wussy. We needed Judge Dennis Chin to give Walters 150 years, just like he did with Madoff.
DC government is a nest of thieves. If ever there were a place for a draconian sentence to be imposed in order to deter others from engaging in similar conduct, this case was it.
People who steal from the public deserve the maximum sentence allowable, with all counts to run consecutively.
4:52 pm
Her deal maxed out at 18 years, so it sounds like Sullivan "wussed" out on those last 6 months...
5:01 pm
Sullivan gave her 6 months off for cooperating with the D.C. Council's investigation into the matter (the WilmerHale/PricewaterhouseCoopers thing).
6:14 pm
Sullivan could have rejected the deal, & ordered her to go to trial. She was facing thousands of years in prison, if charged correctly.
Walters has admitted issuing more than 230 fraudulent property tax refund checks to friends and co-conspirators starting in 1989. That's 230 counts, at what - ten years a count? 2300 years. That's your sentence.
6:25 pm
Incredible.
Why DIDN'T they go to trial? Je ne comprend pas.
She should not be allowed to live not only in DC but in Maryland and Virginia.
6:29 pm
Exactly, Fred. This is a home rule issue - we have a Federal judge & Federal prosecutors handling a purely DC case [in origination, in the locus of the crime, & in victim]. We should have an elected local prosecutor handling this case in Superior Court, & Walters should go to a DC prison located in DC for the rest of her life.