Sheriff's Deputies Posted In Hotel Lobby To Collect Unpaid Taxes
LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — Sheriff's deputies have long been used to evict tenants and transport inmates, besides arresting bad guys. Now, "debt collectors" can be added to their long list of duties.
The city of Los Angeles has taken the unprecedented step of posting sheriff's employees, including plainclothes deputies, in the lobby of a Koreatown hotel in an effort to collect nearly $3.5 million in unpaid taxes.
The city attorney's office says Friday that plainclothes Sheriff's Department contractors -- called "keepers" -- have been posted around the clock since Tuesday to collect money from the Wilshire Hotel, its restaurant, bar and a Starbucks it owns. Sheriff's employees are seizing all the cash being paid to the hotel.
Authorities also have gone after three bank accounts.
City attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan says "tens of thousands of dollars" have been recovered. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore told the Los Angeles Times that $40,000 has been collected and will be handed over to the city.
This is reportedly the first time the city has turned to the sheriff to help collect unpaid taxes.
A judge ordered the payment in March after a city audit concluded the hotel owner, Majestic Towers Inc., underreported the bed taxes it collected from December 2005 through April 2009.
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