Former Murky Coffee Owner Nicholas Cho has been arrested on tax fraud charges, according to the Voice of the Hill. Arrested may be too strong a word. He was arraigned last week; a judge then ordered him to get formally booked by D.C. Police on the charges stemming from his massive tax fraud case filed in D.C. Superior Court this past July. He had been charged with 82 counts of tax fraud. By the time he was charged, his tax problems had become well known.

Judging from a review of the court record, Cho’s real big problem: he can’t  find a defense attorney. Cho wrote to the court on September 22 pleading for more time to get his legal team in place.

Cho wrote:

“I am respectfully requesting a continuance for my court date scheduled for 10:00 AM on September 25, 2009 of 2-4 weeks in order to retain an attorney for my case. I have yet been unable to secure the funds to successfully do so, and should be able to within 2-4 weeks.”

Cho is still pro se. At his arraignment, court records show, he appeared without an attorney and entered a not-guilty plea.

Read More “Murky Coffee Owner Nicholas Cho Formally Booked On Tax Charges” »

Seven years on and still more government documents being “found” and turned over to plaintiffs attorneys in the messy Pershing Park case. Today, AG Peter Nickles filed a notice that roughly 2,000 pages of documents had been produced for the plaintiffs. This is not the first of such notices nor will it be the last.

Nickles writes to the court that “these documents were located as part of the District’s sweeps of the OAG Civil Litigation Division.” Also included with the production was a privilege log reflecting documents redacted or withheld.

Read More “Pershing Park Case: OAG Finds 2,000 Pages Of Discovery Materials” »

Just after midnight on Monday, GW’s Hatchet reported that senior Royal Gethers had gone missing. D.C. Police and the university had launched an investigation. Gethers was out of sight for a little more than a day.

Friends told the Hatchet that Gethers wasn’t the type of guy to just disappear. He was always texting, etc. When he failed to meet up with a friend on Sunday, and didn’t text in an apology, people got worried.

Friends started a Facebook group. Others planned to fly to D.C. to help with the search effort. Flyers started going up.

“Jazz Hayes” wrote into the Facebook group:

“GOODMORNING TEAM. LETS BE PRODUCTIVE AND PRECISE TODAY. FLYERS GO OUT, AND LOCAL NEWSTATIONS ARE CONTACTED. I WILL PAPER THIS ENTIRE DAMN CITY.”

And this from Hayes: “SEARCH TEAM POST YOUR TWITTERS SO WE MAY STAY UPDATED AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!”

And then, um, Gethers showed up on campus Monday morning.

Read More “GW Student Goes ‘Missing,’ Creates One More Unnecessary Facebook Group” »

DC Teacher Chic stresses about having to monitor at-risk students. A huge number of your colleagues just got canned. And you get to complain about your job on a blog. Maybe you should quit. Here’s what they wrote:

“I have the fortunate task of progress monitoring at least three-quarters of the students in my classroom. To progress monitor a student in the intermediate elementary school grades, the assessment takes approximately thirty minutes to complete. And here’s the cherry on this hot-mess sundae — for students identified as high-risk, I have to perform the assessments every two weeks and for the students identified as some-risk, I have to perform them every three-weeks. YIKES!”

Read More “Our Morning Roundup: Should Bloomingdale Become A Gated Community?” »

Leave it to NBC-4 (or if you prefer WRC-TV), operators of the worst local news site, to slap a story with some real news value with a sexist headline. The station follows the Nickles-Cheh story with a piece headlined: “D.C. Catfight!”

First Nickles referred to Cheh as an angry woman. Now, a local news channel throws up another sexist cliche. Wendy Rieger needs to start a protest. Wait, is she still working there?

Read More “NBC-4 Takes On Nickles’ Sexism With Sexist Headline” »

DC.gov is texting some major traffic news:

“MPD is reporting a sinkhole at 295 & Pennsylvania Area. Delays in area; avoid if possible.”

A call to MPD’s press office put me on hold for longer than I care to admit. Maybe the public information officer fell in the sinkhole.

I know the fight between AG Peter Nickles and Councilmember Mary Cheh is getting a lot of play on City Desk. LL noted it. And our Weekend in Reviewer picked it up as well. I think it needs a third look. WaPo wrote on Sunday:

“It’s almost becoming a lawless administration,” said council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3). “They seem to have no limits or restraint on what they are willing to do.”

Attorney General Peter Nickles, who often speaks on behalf of the administration, said Cheh “has no idea what she’s talking about.” “For her to make comments like that, it’s stupid,” he said. “She’s an angry woman.”

What struck me was Nickles’ blatant sexism (which DCist picked up on). Nickles’ comment that “she’s an angry woman” feels like he’s channeling Mad Men. It’s made all the more ironic considering that Nickles had played the race and gender card over the very topic he and Cheh are fighting about: Ximena Hartsock.

Read More “Is Peter Nickles’ ‘Angry Woman’ Comment Sexist? Yes.” »

Maybe WaPo is on to something. Maybe Redskins fans are abandoning the team. One Shepherd Park resident is trying to sell some prime seats to the Dallas game. Just a few years ago, this would have been unthinkable!

Shepherd Park resident “Carole” writes on the listserv:

“Great Christmas Gift! Anybody interested in tickets to Redskins vs Dallas in December? They
are Club house Premium Seats with parking.”

A “Great Christmas Gift?” Nice try.

Read More “The Hardest Sell: Redskins Tickets” »

Councilmember Jim Graham has generally kept quiet on the taxicab bribery case that has so far snared his right-hand-man Ted Loza. But at a recent Kalorama Citizens Association meeting, Graham apparently couldn’t help himself. According to sources in attendance, he blasted federal law enforcement for busting Loza.

Recalls one source who was there: “[Graham] basically said Ted was entrapped by the FBI. The gentleman Kamus…He said he and Ted were very, very good friends. I thought it was a very bizarre thing to say.”

Read More “Graham Slams Feds At Community Meeting; Claims His Remarks Were ‘Off The Record’” »

In the past few weeks, City Desk and everyone else praised Taxicab Commission Chairperson Leon Swain Jr. for his starring role as a police informant. The audio evidence is pretty clear that Swain is one talented actor. David Simon needs to put Swain in his next series.

Swain performed on hours and hours of F.B.I- produced tapes for roughly two years. But is there a case to be made that maybe Swain overacted, that he was too good in the role?

Read More “Was Leon Swain Jr. Too Good At Playing The Criminal?” »

By now, District residents have been well versed on the heroics of Taxicab Commission Chairperson Leon Swain Jr. in the bribery scandal, and the alleged failings of Jim Graham’s Chief of Staff Ted Loza. But the majority of the defendants aren’t well known.

They are parking lot attendants, gas station workers, people who struggle in the service economy to make ends meet. These defendants are the ones who allegedly bribed Swain for under-the-table taxicab licenses. You can find the indictments here.

We decided to do a piece on these anonymous men. Who are they? What did they really know about the bribery scheme?

The answers surprised us. You can read the full story which details what they did, what they knew, and how they were arrested.

Read More “Meet The Other Defendants In the Taxi Bribery Scandal” »

WaPo reports today that D.C. has a new honor: the nation’s unemployment leader. Does this include the DCPS debacle? Or the fallout over homeless services cuts?

WaPo’s Frank Ahrens writes:

“Washington D.C. had the highest percentage rise in unemployment in September, with the jobless rate jumping from 11.1 percent to 11.4 percent, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported moments ago in its monthly state-by-state jobless report.

New York experienced the most jobs lost in the month, but D.C. had the highest percentage loss relative to population. D.C. lost 10,000 jobs from August to September, the Bureau said.”

D.C.’s unemployment rate has jumped to 11.4 percent.

Yesterday, the New York Times announced that it would be cutting 100 newsroom jobs via buyouts and layoffs. When the best paper in the country has to cut jobs, that’s bad, very bad news. Anyone that’s checked out journalismjobs.com lately will tell you that the news industry isn’t clamoring for reporters. But the news provoked a surprisingly sympathetic response from Times readers. Some offered to pay money to read the paper’s online version!

Will you, dear reader, beg to pay us for our online journalism?

*photo courtesy of mediabistro.

Dee Does The District doesn’t appreciate a sad bit of race baiting reported from the marathon hearing on the DCPS teacher layoffs.

Harry Potter and the Urban School Nightmare despairs over their students’ poor attendance. They write:

“Our school’s enrollment is down, and attendance is lower than I’ve ever seen it. When I first started at my school, I routinely had between 25 and 30 students in my class each day. Now, I’m lucky if I get 12. Today, less than half of my students were in class, and last week the average was 55%. Now, the kids who are there every day are learning like FIENDS, but at this rate 45% of my kids are going to fail. So what gives?”

Read More “Our Morning Roundup: DCPS Students Discover The Working Lunch” »

There have been a number of shootings lately in Shaw. This has touched off a lot of worries on the part of community leaders that a gang war has started up. Councilmember Jim Graham dashed off a letter to D.C. Police  Chief Cathy Lanier and others concerning these recent events.

Read the letter after the jump.

Read More “Has A Gang War Started In Shaw? Graham Says Yes.” »