This case is going to challenge headline and blog post title writers for the foreseeable future.
Orlando Sanchez
Two elected Harris County officials squared off Tuesday over a bizarre case in which a top treasury official was charged in a $35,000 check kiting fraud to meet the financial demands of a dominatrix.
Harris County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez was critical of how District Attorney Kim Ogg handled the criminal case against a top administrator in the county’s treasurer’s office, after he was arrested last week for an alleged check fraud scheme and claimed he was being blackmailed by a financial dominatrix.
“What’s disturbing to me is that the district attorney knew about the investigation six months ago,” Sanchez said Tuesday. “Neither the sheriff or the district attorney gave me a phone call—as a heads up without going into the specifics of the investigation—that there was somebody in my office being looked at.”
[…]
On Tuesday, Ogg defended the way her office handled the six-month investigation and when they alerted Sanchez.
“Because it was an ongoing investigation, we did a lot of work before any witnesses were talked to,” said said. “And that kind of investigation is never made public otherwise it is impossible to know who might be involved.”
The county’s top prosecutor said she phoned Sanchez minutes after confirming that her office was filing charges against Lueb.
See here for the background. I just want to say that “Financial Dominatrix” is going to be the name of my Liz Phair tribute band. Also, remember how I said that the last thing Sanchez would want would be for this to be a multi-day story? You’re doing it wrong, dude. Not that I don’t appreciate it, mind you.
On the matter of Sanchez’s complaint, the first thing I’d say is what if any policies are there regarding how criminal investigations into county employees like Gregory Lueb are handled? In other words, did Ogg’s office do more or less what previous DAs have done in this sort of circumstance, or was there a substantial difference?
Putting that aside for a moment, I can think of at least three reasons why Ogg might have kept this under her hat until her team was ready to file a case:
1. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they needed to be sure that Sanchez himself was not in any way involved.
2. Once they have cleared Sanchez, if he knows that one of his employees is being investigated, that may cause him to act differently around them and thus possibly tip off the target of the investigation. There’s a reason this sort of information is generally kept quiet.
3. Even if you can completely trust Sanchez’s poker face, knowing that one or more of his employees is being investigated may change his perception of them, and this may persist even if the investigation winds up being dropped. He – and this is true of anyone, not just Orlando Sanchez – may have a lingering suspicion or sense of doubt, regardless of whether there was a reason for it.
So, unless Ogg violated previously accepted protocols, I see no cause for Sanchez to be upset. He was told when he needed to know, and that seems like the way to go. KUHF has more.
What a dumb ass. If I were Orlando Sanchez I’d be less concerned with a six month long/old DA investigation and more concerned with the failures of any checks and balance his Dept. has in place.
His name is in the paper!
In this day and age, I don’t know why anyone would agree to be blackmailed for something like this.
“Oh, you’re going to tell my friends, family and employer that I employed your services as a dominatrix? Go ahead. Nothing illegal about that. Meanwhile, I’ll make sure your parents and grandparents and neighbors all know all about it, too, that you’re a perverted hooker.”
I’d make sure her dry cleaner, her hair stylist, and basically everyone she knows is aware that she’s a perverted hooker. The only response to something like this is scorched earth.
Bill, I don’t know if you don’t what a hooker is (perverted (?) or not) or what a dominatrix is, but it sounds like your suggested retaliatory, Gen. Sherman measure could be blackmail-ish as well, and/or pure slander.
I imagine that he mainly didn’t want his wife to find out. Going negative on the dominatix would only make that worse.
C.L.: I absolutely intended going after the dominatrix to be ‘blackmail-ish and full on General Sherman. Burn it all. Somebody comes after you, you have to go after them even harder. If someone attempted to blackmail me, I’d make it my life’s mission to go after that person. That’s what this guy should have done, instead of stealing from the taxpayers. He needs to go to jail for that. Oh, and about that slander. Let’s say they weren’t actually having paid sex. It’s still going to be his word against hers on that. Slander would be hard to prove, especially when all the kinky details come out. If she sued him, he just countersues.
I’d would have definitely gone scorched Earth, and would have done it as soon as I was presented with the blackmail demand. Hit her first, and hard.
@Corey: I’m pretty sure the wife found out anyway. He should have done a preemptive strike. Tell the wife, then hit the would be blackmailer, hard. I’d be passing out flyers at her gym, at her dry cleaners, to all of her neighbors, her grandparents, parents, and anyone else I could think of, enlightening them about what she does for a living. Free speech, right?