The man, Arian Taherzadeh, 40, of Washington, pleaded guilty July 20 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of federal conspiracy, one count of illegal possession of large-capacity ammunition and one count of eavesdropping. the Justice Department said. The latest charge relates to the unauthorized recording of women having sex in his apartment, federal prosecutors said. No sentencing date has been set. The Justice Department said Mr. Taherzadeh had agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy charge. The guilty plea came nearly four months after Mr. Taherzadeh and another Washington man, Haider Ali, 35, were charged with impersonating United States officials in a case that appeared to reveal deficiencies within the Secret Service, the agency that is tasked with protecting the president and the president’s family. Four members of the agency, who did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday, have been placed on administrative leave while the case is investigated. From December 2018 to April 2022, Mr. Taherzadeh “falsely impersonated and pretended to be officers or employees” of several government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, federal prosecutors said. He recruited people into his security company, the United States Special Police, under the guise of being a “covert federal law enforcement group,” prosecutors said. He then defrauded three Washington apartment complex owners by saying he needed their units for supposed business, prosecutors said. While the apartments lost more than $800,000 in unpaid rent together, Mr. Taherzadeh ingratiated himself with at least three Secret Service officers — buying them gifts including a drone, a survival kit and, more lavishly, several rent-free apartments, including of a penthouse for a year, prosecutors said. He had also offered to buy a $2,000 assault rifle for an agent assigned to Jill Biden’s protective detail, according to an affidavit. Michelle Peterson, a federal public defender representing Mr. Taherzadeh, declined to comment Monday. The Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the Secret Service. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. It is unclear exactly how the men financed their impersonation scheme. Court records say Mr. Ali had helped fund the United States Special Police and other overhead costs by paying with large amounts of cash he carried. But prosecutors did not specify how Mr. Ali had obtained his money. Mr Ali told witnesses he had links to Inter-Agency Intelligence in Pakistan — a claim the Pakistani embassy denied and described in April as “completely false”. Mr. Ali also had several visas issued by Pakistan and Iran, prosecutors said. Mr. Ali had also made other outlandish claims about his past, prosecutors said: That he had been involved in the capture of Joaquin Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo. that his family were members of the Middle East. and that she was a Calvin Klein model. Mr. Taherzadeh made up his story to the agents, prosecutors said, telling them he was an Army Ranger, a Department of Homeland Security special agent, a U.S. marshal and an undercover officer who had once killed someone in a penalty shootout. When workers at an apartment complex confronted Mr. Taherzadeh, Mr. Ali and an unidentified person over their failure to pay rent, the men blamed issues with a bogus administration at the United States Special Police and a slow federal bureaucracy , prosecutors said. In his unpaid apartment, Mr. Taherzadeh installed surveillance cameras to record women having sex and kept an unlicensed gun that was loaded with high-capacity ammunition, prosecutors said. At an apartment called The Crossing, Mr. Taherzadeh and Mr. Ali used their personas as law enforcement officials to obtain parking spaces for themselves and members of the Secret Service, prosecutors said. One apartment, The Sonnet, eventually evicted Mr Taherzadeh for non-payment of rent. Efforts to recruit Mr. Taherzadeh and Mr. Ali for the United States Special Police depended heavily on portraying them as federal officers, prosecutors said. In one case, Mr. Taherzadeh instructed a recruit to conduct weapons-handling exercises. In another, he showed a separate recruit a fake Homeland Security investigation file marked “confidential.” And much of their impersonation scheme, prosecutors said, was rooted in attention to detail: They had a machine to create and program “personal identity verification” cards. a black SUV with police lights inside. dozens of weapons; regular law enforcement tools. clothing with police insignia. a fingerprint kit; and equipment used to breach doors. Authorities also found about 30 hard drives, hard drive duplicating equipment and other surveillance equipment. The investigation into Mr. Taherzadeh and Mr. Ali began after a letter carrier with the United States Postal Service was attacked in March at an apartment complex where the men lived. A US Postal Inspector went to the compound to interview witnesses, including the two men. According to the affidavit, the men told the inspector they were investigators with the US Special Investigations Unit. They said they were involved in an undercover investigation into gang-related activity, as well as an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The inspector reported the information to the Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General, which referred the case to the FBI
