A former senior lawyer with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has been sentenced to nine months of home detention after previously pleading guilty to a federal extortion charge and agreeing to cooperate in a probe into the city’s handling of the botched launch of the Department of Water and Power’s billing system.
Thomas H. Peters, 56, of Pacific Palisades was ordered to serve the home confinement as part of a larger sentence of three years of probation that was announced Tuesday, May 9, in federal court.
Peters — who formerly served as chief of the litigation branch of the City Attorney’s Office — was also fined $50,000, though he avoided prison time sought by prosecutors.
Peters is among at least four city employees who have pleaded guilty in connection to a federal investigation stemming from 2014 when the DWP was facing multiple lawsuits related to the rollout of a massively flawed new billing system that resulted in hundreds of ratepayers receiving inaccurate bills.
Lawyers with the City Attorney’s Office were helping craft the city’s response. A $67 million settlement was reached by the various parties related to the billing lawsuits.
But a former employee of one of the attorney’s involved threatened to release documents showing that lawyers for the city had allegedly and secretly colluded with an attorney representing DWP ratepayers in crafting the settlement unless the employee was paid more than a million dollars, according to court filings.
Peters spoke to other senior members of the City Attorney’s Office about the extortion demand, according to court filings, and understood that they wanted the matter resolved quietly and the documents returned.
In response, prosecutors said, Peters threatened to end the attorney’s work for the city unless he paid the former employee $800,000 to secure the return of the sensitive documents.
Federal prosecutors had requested an 18-month prison term for Peters. They acknowledged he…
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