The former chief of civil litigation for the LA City Attorney’s Office was sentenced to home confinement and probation for his role in trying to cover-up the City’s efforts to rig class action lawsuits filed by overbilled Department of Water and Power customers.
Thomas H. Peters admitted in a plea agreement that he tried to get another lawyer to pay $800,000 to an extortionist, who had threatened to reveal the City’s scheme, and Peters told the judge Tuesday his actions were shameful.
“I committed a crime, I admit to it,” Peters said.
Federal prosecutors had argued for an 18-month prison term, crediting Peters’ extensive cooperation with FBI and state bar investigations, which was far less time in custody than the 41-51 months that had been recommended by the court’s probation office.
Peters and his defense attorney, Jeffrey Rutherford, declined to comment outside court.
In considering the sentence for Peters U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr. told prosecutors he was concerned about other attorneys, some in the City Attorney’s Office, who had orchestrated the scheme Peters’ was prosecuted for trying to cover up.
“This is an incredibly sordid affair,” Judge Blumenfeld said of the City’s efforts a decade ago to recruit a friendly lawyer to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the DWP’s overcharged customers, while the City concealed the fact that the City was secretly directing its own favorable terms for the suit and the settlement.
“Which was a fairly substantial fraud on the court,” Blumenfeld observed, repeatedly raising questions about why Peters, who did not concoct the scheme, was the only former City Attorney’s Office employee being prosecuted.
“That is correct, he was not the architect,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan S. Har.
Har, and the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office criminal section in its LA office, Mack Jenkins, declined to answer questions outside court.
In his plea agreement Peters said the discussion and approval of the extortion payment happened at a December, 2017 meeting inside the City Attorney’s Office at City Hall East, where official calendars obtained by the I-Team showed former City Attorney Mike Feuer was in attendance.
Feuer said he didn’t remember the meeting and denied discussing anything illegal.
Last August Feuer circulated a letter he received from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that said he was not a target of the criminal investigation into the DWP litigation debacle.
Peters has been cooperating with investigators from the California State Bar, who are examining the conduct of numerous private and City lawyers involved in the litigation scheme and the cover up, according to court records and officials.
The nature of that cooperation was redacted from the public court file.
Judge Blumenfeld raised the issue of consequences for the involved attorneys — repeatedly — at Peters’ sentencing.
“This court takes very seriously…the integrity of lawyers here, not just one lawyer,” he said, and added others in the City Attorney’s Office who were involved and either are being investigated, “or certainly ought to be investigated.”
To date — the former general manager of the DWP, David H. Wright, and a former executive, David F. Alexander, have been sentenced to prison after admitting to a related enrichment scheme, and a private attorney, Paul O. Paradis, has pleaded guilty to a bribery charge tied to the DWP.
