Dianne Wilkerson, (D-Hackkville) is going to plead guilty in federal court today.
The plea agreement Wilkerson struck with federal prosecutors was not made public, according to court documents filed yesterday.
The Roxbury Democrat was scheduled to go to trial June 21 on charges of extortion, theft of honor services and mail and wire fraud stemming from her allegedly pocketing $23,500 in payola between 2002 and 2008 in exchange for her paving the way for a nightclub liquor license and land development.
Wilkerson was secretly photographed – and immortalized – jamming $1,000 into her bra by an undercover operative at an upscale Beacon Hill brasserie. Neither she nor her attorney Max Stern returned calls for comment.
This was not Wilkerson’s first brush with the law.
Wilkerson, who voters chose not to return to a seventh term in office one month before her October 2008 arrest, is an attorney, but has been suspended from practicing law for more than a decade because of her 1997 conviction for willful failure to file federal income tax returns, and for subsequently violating the terms of her probation by breaking a 9 p.m. curfew.
My hunch is she will avoid jail time by taking the guilty plea. Judging from her track record, she will violate probation and wind up in the can or under house arrest.
Another day, another corrupt Democrat facing a judge in criminal court.