Court fires five workers; grand jury indicts sixth

By Bob Young and Mike Carter
Seattle Times staff reporters

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A court official said the cases were not related, but a federal prosecutor said investigators would look for possible links because of the timing of the incidents.

The five employees accused of fixing their tickets were fired Thursday — one day after Cassandra Kay Daniels, an administrative specialist with the Municipal Court, was arrested on a federal grand jury indictment in the identity-theft plot.

The investigation into the latter began in January. That, according to the federal indictment, is when Daniels, a 19-year court employee, contacted an employee with the state Department of Licensing and offered to pay her $1,500 each for false Washington drivers' licenses.

The DOL employee had provided false drivers' licenses to others and, somehow, Daniels knew this, according to the indictment.

The DOL employee balked, and five months passed. During that time, the employee "came to the attention of law enforcement and began cooperating," Assistant U.S. Attorney Vince Lombardi said. Daniels was arrested after the FBI taped numerous conversations between her and the DOL worker. She never succeeded in obtaining a false identification.

Daniels and the Department of Licensing worker are on leave from their jobs, state officials said.

Lombardi said additional charges could come pending an investigation by the FBI, Seattle police, the King County Sheriff's Office and the Social Security Administration's inspector general's office.

Daniels could not be reached for comment.

The ticket-fixing cases were discovered during an audit of a recent amnesty program offered to anyone with outstanding tickets.

The five accused workers, all administrative employees like Daniels, acted independently and were not coordinating their efforts, Municipal Court Administrator Susanne White said.
 
They used different schemes, including extending the due dates of tickets and removing overdue tickets from lists that were going to a collection agency, White said. Together, she said, the five employees fixed 18 tickets.

Presiding Judge Fred Bonner fired the employees Thursday after an internal investigation.

"Unfortunately they engaged in very serious misconduct and in violation of court and city policies," White said.

She said the court did not push for criminal charges.

"I don't think that decision has been totally made. Probably termination is serious enough," she said.

The court would not release the names of the five employees pending possible appeals.

Kathryn Harper, a spokeswoman for the City Attorney's Office, said no more details would be released about the court employees until the workers were notified that the information had been requested.

"It's our option to do that under public-disclosure laws. That's what attorneys are advising us in the interest of everybody here," she said.

Harper said the city was concerned about the individuals' privacy and about lawsuits by the fired employees.

Rob McCauley, business agent for Teamsters Local 763, which represents about 100 Municipal Court employees, said four of the five employees ultimately paid their tickets after gaining extensions for themselves.

"Only one is accused of evading ticket payment," he said. "In some cases, there probably were violations of procedure, but for the most part there was no intent to defraud the court or city. We have some concern that termination was too severe as a penalty."

He said the union, which represents four of the five employees, would review the cases and determine whether to appeal the firings.

Meanwhile, Lombardi, the federal prosecutor, said the timing of the ticket-fixing and identity-theft cases is enough to send agents back to the court to investigate any connection between the incidents.

"I've been doing this long enough to be suspicious of coincidences," he said.

Seattle Municipal Court ran its ticket-amnesty program Jan. 2 to March 31. Under the plan, delinquent fines could be paid in full with all collection fees and interest waived.

The court launched the program to collect on more than 600,000 overdue parking and traffic tickets up to a decade old, worth around $64 million. As of early July, it had received about $900,000 in delinquent fines.

The court is the state's busiest, where each year thousands of defendants face criminal charges that extend up to gross misdemeanors, punishable by as much as a year in jail.

The court, on Fifth Avenue across from Seattle City Hall, employs 223.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com