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Federal authorities have arrested 27 people so far in a massive bribery case tied to the D.C. taxicab industry. Two indictments released today accuse a total of 39 individuals of conspiring to bribe city officials in order to obtain fraudulent taxi licenses between 2007 and 2009.
Head to City Desk for downloadable .PDFs of the indictments. The documents reveal that D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain was the man who first alerted federal authorities to the conspiracy, and the Post reports that Swain was working undercover for the FBI on the case as recently as last month. Mike DeBonis has more on Swain, who so far has not publicly commented on his involvement.
First word of the investigation broke last week, when Ted Loza, chief of staff to Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham, was arrested and charged with accepting $1,500 in cash and other gifts from taxicab lobbyist Abdulaziz Kamus. Kamus's name does not appear in today's indictments, and it's been previously reported that he was cooperating with the FBI as an informant.
The payments involved on the taxicab commission's end appear to be much larger: first $14,000 in cash, then $8,000, and even a shopping bag filled with $59,880, plus numerous smaller payments of around $3,000, all totaling up to ultimately hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The apparent ringleaders named in today's charges are Yitbarek Syume, Berhane Leghese, and Amanuel Ghirmazion, but scores of others are also alleged to be involved, and both indictments refer to co-conspirators "both known and unknown to the Grand Jury." This case appears poised to grow only larger.
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That's one hell of a shopping bag. I can't wait for this shitstorm to develop! A few plops will turn into a raging tempest...
I'd be satisfied with just a roll or two of quarters to be perfectly honest.
I'd be satisfied with a roll in the hay.
So what the heck is up with Swain? Did he get caught early? Or did he call them at the first sign of a bribe?
From the Post:
Law enforcement sources said authorities were first alerted to the scam in 2007 when taxi industry officials approached the chairman of the D.C. Taxi Commission in the hopes of bribing him. That official, Leon Swain, who is not identified by name in the indictment, reported the attempted bribes to authorities, the sources said.
Okay. That's good.
Not only was he cooperating from the start, but it would have been surprising if he wasn't--Swain is a former vice cop who was actually tossed off the taxicab commission once before for ruffling feathers when he started talking openly about the corrupt shenanigans going on there before.
Kind of makes you wonder at the cluelessness of the people who were trying to bribe him.
From the CP story:
"He was with us from the start," says Ben Friedman, spokesperson for the U.S. attorney.]
Worth a read:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/10/02/leon-swain-taxicab-whistleblower-hero/
Loza must be kicking himself for accepting merely $1500.
And clearly cabbies in DC are not hurting for money. No fare increases for them!
The apparent ringleaders named in today's charges are Yitbarek Syume, Berhane Leghese, and Amanuel Ghirmazion,
At last, DC is sending a strong message to the Bavarian Illuminati: you, your corrupt taxi mafia, your stupid f**king conspiracy movies, and your delicious cream horns aren't welcome here! Raus! Macht schnell!
Mr. Swain also had too much to lose if he had been caught taking a bribe. Given that he was with MPD, I am sure that he knew that Washington is full of Feds who have nothing better to do than snoop around. I do believe that Mr. Swain was genuinely disgusted at being offered bribes and was sincere in his reporting of it. He chose to train to be a Police when it was decidedly NOT fashionable to do so.
Still, as a previous poster indicated, Mr. Swain was unhappy with some of the garbage going on when he was on the first DCTC. Further, he tried to get a few things done such as reforming education of new drivers, but the rest of the DCTC was not interested. He also managed to reign in complaints from a certain then sitting 'Commissioner' who was notorious for springing rubber checks on the drivers when she got to her destination or trying to pay them with Safeway discount coupons. This 'Commissioner' would also file formal complaints about every third cab that the dispatch service that she called would send to her. It got to the point where none of the drivers of that company would accept her call.
I fault Mr. Swain less for the horrible things that the D.C. Government is doing to the veteran cab drivers. Recent events have shown that the DCTC is a tool of Dear Revered Leader Kim il-Fenty. What Fenty says, the Commission does. Mr. Swain serves at the Pleasure of the Mayor, and I assume that he does want to keep his job.
Still, the Feds have yet to get to the one man who is trying to take away the livelihoods of the drivers. They have arrested one of his partners, Yitbarek Myume, and raided the home of another, but they have yet to get to him. There has been word on the street for some time that you could see this man, whom the Feds have yet to get, and get a hack licence for Five-K. They are selling themselves short. The last man that they arrested for selling hack licences was charging twelve to fifteen thousand dollars. This was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Still, if all of these guys were trying to buy hack licences, there must be a crackdown coming on unlicenced drivers. This has been a problem for years, and the authorities have been aware of it. They have refused to do much about it, preferring to focus their 'enforcement efforts' on the harrassment of legitimate drivers. In the District of Columbia, in most cases, the vehicle is legitimate: it has H-registration, a DCTC licence and a policy of insurance. It is the driver who AIN'T legitimate. The rub on this is that all automobile liability insurance policies contain an exclusion for an 'unauthorised driver'. Unlicenced is unauthorised therefore UNINSURED. The Authorities have tolerated the existence of this hazard to the public, visitors and those who do business here for some time.
The illegals know that the Authorities will allow them to work unmolested. Recently, they popped several unlicenced drivers working the line at Union Station. At that point, they had to do something about the specific illegals that they caught. Still, it is an indicator that there is a real problem. Ask any veteran hacker: if he goes to the Station, he EXPECTS to see the Hack Inspector there. It is like expecting to see the speed trap at the bottom of Cleveland Avenue or the NastyCam car on Arizona Avenue, Sherman Avenue or East Capitol Street. If these illegals are so brazen that they will work the line at the Station with little risk of being caught, something is wrong.