Photo by Doug Duvall

Tony Cheng, owner of the popular Chinatown restaurant of the same name, along with his son, Anthony R. Cheng, Jr. pleaded guilty to federal charges today that they attempted to bribe city officials to get taxicab licenses.

According to a release from U.S. Attorney Ron Machen’s office, Cheng Sr. pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “making an offer of unauthorized compensation to a public official,” while his son, Cheng Jr., “pled guilty to a felony charge of payment of a gratuity to a public official.”

The charges against the Chengs’ alleges that they attempted to get business licenses for their taxicab company from D.C. regulatory agencies, after a moratorium on the issuance of taxi licenses was implemented, by falsifying documents that their company was incorporated before the moratorium was implemented in 2009. Prosecutors in Machen’s office say that the Chengs approached a public official, identified as “Public Official Number One,” in 2011 and offered him $1,500 and a ten percent cut of profits in exchange for taxi licenses.

The charges also alleges that, in the fall of 2010, Cheng Sr. decided to start a towing company and offered “Public Official Number One” ten percent of profits if he helped him in “completing the paperwork associated with establishing the business and assisting the company in securing towing assignments from the taxicab commission.”

In a statement, Machen said that “with today’s guilty pleas, a financially successful father and son confessed to their efforts to pay off public officials to advance their business interests.” He added that “the Chengs should be commended for owning up to their crimes before trial, but their admissions are a sobering reminder that we must continue to aggressively fight the pay-to-play culture that, if left unchecked, can determine who has the ability to engage in business opportunities with the government. We hope that these convictions serve as a warning to other business owners who are tempted to make illicit payments to public officials in order to get ahead.”

Sentencing for the Chengs is scheduled for July 17, 2014 and, under federal sentencing guidelines, they face up to six months in jail and fines of up to $5,000.