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Lobbyist Sentenced for Destroying Evidence in Public Corruption Investigation

A partner in a Pennsylvania-based lobbying firm was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., to five months of home detention for destroying evidence in connection with a public corruption investigation, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor for the District of Columbia, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Joseph Persichini Jr., and Special Agent in Charge C. AndrĂ© Martin of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation announced.

Cecelia Grimes, 43, of Parkesburg, Penn., was also sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay a $3,000 fine. Previously, on July 25, 2008, Grimes pleaded guilty before Judge Kennedy in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. According to the evidence presented in court documents and at the plea hearing, Grimes was a registered lobbyist whose firm submitted requests for appropriations to the office of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Representative A). Beginning prior to October 2006, the FBI opened an investigation into certain activities of Representative A, including whether Representative A agreed to support appropriations requests made by Grimes’s firm in return for the payment of fees to Grimes’s firm by its clients.

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