From the Post, we learn that Richard Walters, younger brother of Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement mastermind Harriette Walters, has been sentenced to four years and three months in prison for his role in the scheme. Richard Walters pleaded guilty in May to personally helping his sister steal $4.9 million of the over $50 million she stole altogether.......

As expected, Harriette Walters entered a plea of guilty today, admitting to her role as the head of an elaborate scheme that pilfered almost $50 million from District of Columbia taxpayers. The former mid-level manager at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue is expected to serve up to 18 years in prison, pending approval by Judge Emmet Sullivan. In a lengthy report to the court based on extensive interviews with Walters, prosecutors finally confirmed......

Big scoop for the Examiner: Harriette Walters, the alleged mastermind behind the enormous Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement scandal, will plead guilty. Walters is charged with heading up an elaborate scheme that resulted in $48 million worth of phony property-tax refunds. Nearly all of the eleven other people charged for their involvement in the scam have already pleaded guilty and presumably agreed to testify against Walters, had she gone forward with a trial.......

Congress has probed the Interior Department and come out with hard allegations that members of the department have gotten drunk, used drugs and had sex with officials for the oil companies they allegedly regulate. The reports charge that those responsible for dictating where the oil companies can drill have let the drillers take them to parties at hotels and received their illicit gifts. The government receives and resells a percentage of all oil drilled by......

It's a really slow day for local news, so over on the DCist staff email list, all we're talking about is John Edwards. He's admitted to ABC News that he did have an affair with Rielle Hunter, and defends himself by saying that he didn't love her and that his wife, Elizabeth, was in remission at the time. Because, apparently, it would have been totally inexcusable of him to cheat while his wife was undergoing......

Nice work by the Post's David Nakamura over at D.C. Wire -- he figured out that you can still call an old extension at the Office of Tax and Revenue and hear an outgoing message that begins, "You've reached the office of Harriette Walters." Apparently officials decided to keep the line active with Walters's voice message to see if anyone would leave a message for her that would aid investigators. We just gave it a......

As expected, former IRS employee Robert Steven, 55, pleaded guilty in federal court today for his involvement in the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue scandal. Steven remains free until he is sentenced on Oct. 8. The Post has a bit more information about the role Steven and his estranged wife Patricia played in the enormous embezzlement scheme. A bank account set up by the couple in the name of a clothing design firm took......

The Post says that Robert Steven, a former division director of the IRS's New Carrollton office, appears set to plead guilty in federal court today for his involvement in the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue scandal. Steven and his estranged wife are both longtime friends of Harriette Walters and have both been charged; Steven's charges are listed as possession of stolen property and conspiring to commit money laundering. Missing from the story: did Steven's......

The ax keeps coming down on the Harriette Walters crew. The Post is reporting that Walter Jones, 33, a former Bank of America manager from Essex, Md., has pleaded guilty to his role in the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement case, which included laundering roughly $18 million, and personally receiving more than $366,000 in stolen money. Though Walters is credited with being the mastermind of the massive fraud, currently estimated to have totaled up......

It's almost as if the District's Office of Tax and Revenue has been looking for more ways to come across as a bunch of buffoons. Today the Examiner reports on how one persistent Capitol Hill resident, Noah Meyerson, was responsible for forcing the office to fix an error they had not even detected which allowed roughly 300 homeowners to skip out on an entire property tax payment last year. The tax office is naturally downplaying......

Howard University's soccer coach was arrested Friday in Louisa County, Va., for attempting to meet with an underage girl for a sexual encounter. The girl turned out to be an undercover police officer posing online as a 13-year-old. NBC4 reports that coach Joseph Okoh, 40, had previously coached at Wakefield, T.C. Williams and other high schools in Northern Virginia and Howard's website adds that he also coached at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Louisa......

District CFO Natwar Gandhi sent out a press release announcing the appointment of Stephen Cordi, a former deputy comptroller for the state of Maryland, as the new director of the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. Cordi takes the job vacated by Sherryl Hobbs Newman after she was fired in the wake of the biggest city government embezzlement scandal in history. Here's what the Post says about Cordi, who has been serving as an attorney......

The Washington Post has a new nugget today in the story of the impressive spending habits of W. Richard West, Jr., retiring director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. In addition to the $250,000 in public money he used for luxurious travel expenses we noted last week, the Post reveals West commissioned a $48,500 portrait of himself (pictured left) that hangs in the patron's lounge of the museum. Some would argue that......

You didn't think we could get through the last few days of 2007 without one more Smithsonian scandal, did you? The Post has a lengthy report today on National Museum of the American Indian's retiring director Rick West and the whopping $250,000 of Institution funds he spent on travel and luxuries. Although West can account for some of the travel -- going to visit Indian reservations, meeting donors -- much of it is vaguely characterized......