A D.C. man who was arrested in April and accused of posing as a federal agent pleaded guilty in court Monday.
Arian Taherzadeh, who faced charges of impersonating a government employee and weapons charges, pleaded guilty to three charges in District Court: conspiracy, illegal possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device and voyeurism.
In a three-hour plea hearing, Taherzadeh admitted he tried to pose as a member of a federal law enforcement agency in order to get close to real agents of the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security.
His scheme also involved defrauding some D.C. apartment buildings out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent for apartments he gave to members of the Secret Service but never paid rent for.
During the plea hearing, he also admitted to installing surveillance cameras outside and inside one of the apartments so he could record women engaged in sexual activity without their knowledge, court documents said. He later showed the videos illegally recorded to others.
Domen spoke to the DMV Download podcast about the details revealed during the plea hearing:
Taherzadeh ran United States Special Police LLC, a private law enforcement and security business that wasn’t associated with any government agency.
Haider Ali, 36, is still facing charges in connection with this case. Taherzadeh has agreed to cooperate with the government as that investigation moves forward. No sentencing date has been set yet, but he’s scheduled to be back in court later this fall to update the judge about his cooperation in the case.
The arrest of Taherzadeh and Ali came at the end of a process that began when someone allegedly assaulted a letter carrier in an apartment building in the Navy Yard neighborhood March 14. When an inspector from the U.S. Postal Inspectors Service began investigating, several people told them that Taherzadeh and Ali may have seen the incident, since they supposedly had video surveillance cameras set up throughout the building.
Residents also said the two controlled several apartments in the complex, and said the Department of Homeland Security paid for them all.
WTOP’s Rick Massimo contributed to this report.
