“If you put me back in there today, I could get each of you a check.”
—tax scammer Harriette Walters, June 30
The greatest instance of municipal larceny in District history came to a quiet end this year with the sentencing of Walters, who led a ring that stole nearly $50 million from city tax coffers. Justice came for Walters in Judge Emmet Sullivan‘s federal courtroom, ending a string of pleas and sentences in the case discovered in 2007. But how much has changed since then? Natwar M. Gandhi, the man who oversaw the city tax office while Walters’ scheme was absorbing enormous sums of taxpayer money, remains the District’s chief financial officer. And Walters, while expressing deep regret and repentance upon receiving a sentence of 17-and-a-half years in prison, insisted in the above quotation that perhaps not all of the loopholes she opened have been closed.