He faces up to 46 months in prison for conspiracy and an additional sentence for other offenses.
Reading the plea, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in court Monday that Taherzadeh orchestrated the scheme to please himself with “federal law enforcement and the defense community.” as well as to “rip off apartment complexes” by giving him leases he couldn’t afford. .
On Monday, Taherzadeh admitted for the first time to a series of allegations associated with the ruse. He said he created an entity called the United States Special Police to represent himself as a federal official, even though the company was in no way associated with the US government. He also admitted that he lavished gifts on real members of the US Secret Service – such as a rent-free penthouse apartment and a weapons locker – in order to “deepen [his] relationships with them. It remains unclear to what end Taherzadeh pursued friendships with law enforcement, including officials tasked with protecting the White House and First Lady Jill Biden.
As part of the scheme, Taherzadeh admitted to installing surveillance cameras inside and outside his apartment to covertly record women engaging in sexual activity.
The guilty plea was the latest step in a months-long investigation that became public one afternoon in April when a squad of heavily armed federal agents burst into the Crossing, an apartment building in luxury in the Navy Yard area. Taherzadeh and a 36-year-old man named Haidar Ali, who lived in the building at the time, were charged with impersonating federal law enforcement.
A subsequent investigation uncovered a trail of alleged deception in court documents and lawsuits spanning several apartment buildings and several years. At each compound, Taherzadeh pretended to be a federal law enforcement officer by obtaining equipment such as police badges and tactical gear and, in one case, an unlicensed firearm with 61 rounds, he admitted in his plea.
He fabricated stories about his background and set up secret task forces to recruit others and defraud apartment complex owners into providing him with apartments and parking spaces for his bogus law enforcement operations. law.
The Crossing, Carver and Sonnet apartment complexes together lost more than $800,000 in unpaid apartments, parking spaces and other fees, prosecutors say.
At one point, Taherzadeh set up a bogus Homeland Security and Investigations ‘recruitment process’ where he shot a recruit with an air rifle to ‘verify’ him, he admitted in documents filed in court.
“We shot each other for fun,” he said in court on Monday. “It was something we did as a drinking game.”
He also admitted in court to visiting a Secret Service employee while on duty near the White House compound by tracking him via his iPhone location.
Taherzadeh and Ali pleaded not guilty before Taherzadeh reported last month that he had changed his mind. Ali’s attorney argued that he believed he was working for a legitimate security company.
Taherzadeh is at home free with travel restrictions. A status hearing is scheduled for November 2. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
