A former DC police employee was sentenced to 78 days in jail for accepting over $40,000 in bribes to provide personal information about traffic crash victims and for insurance fraud in another case.
The defendant, identified as 46-year-old Kendra Coles, of Beltsville, MD, pleaded guilty to one count each of bribery of a public official and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud in 2019 at a DC court, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Coles will serve her time on weekends, and will remain on probation for three years. She is also ordered by the court to pay $6,000 in restitution to an insurance carrier, as well as a $40,000 forfeiture money judgment.
Coles started working for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in 2006 as a customer service representative. She later served at the Department’s Patrol Services and School Safety Bureau.
In 2015, during her employment at the above mentioned office, Coles reportedly worked with two people who operated as “runners” which connected lawyers with accident victims that could be their potential clients.
In exchange for personal data of crash victims, one of the “runners” paid Coles around $400 to $500 every week and another one paid her approximately $350 per week, totaling more than $40,000 over the course of two years, which was the amount she received from at least two “runners.”
MPD discovered that Coles accessed Traffic Crash Reports, a system that displays police reports of recent traffic accidents, 3,367 times from June 1, 2017 to October 6, 2017 alone.