A former senior official at the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has agreed to plead guilty to a federal extortion charge and is cooperating in the ongoing probe of the city’s handling of the botched launch of a DWP billing system, prosecutors announced on Monday, Jan. 10.
Thomas H. Peters, 55, of Pacific Palisades, threatened to fire a plaintiffs’ attorney from a lucrative special counsel job with the city unless the lawyer paid an $800,000 extortion demand from a former employee who was threatening to expose the city’s collusive litigation over its faulty billing system, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said that Peters did not have “direct authority” to fire the attorney form the special counsel job — that would be up to senior leadership.
They wrote in a filing that Peters spoke with other “senior members” of the City Attorney’s Office about the extortion demand, and “understood from senior leadership at the City Attorney’s Office that they wanted the matter resolved quietly and the Sensitive Documents returned.”
That department’s top official, City Attorney Mike Feuer, responded Monday to the announcement of Peters’ plea agreement saying that he is “furious and disappointed beyond words that someone I hired and placed faith in would commit this breach of trust—of the public, of my office and of me personally.”
He had earlier asked for Peters’s resignation, for an unrelated reason, and only Monday became aware of the actions alleged by...
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