Thread by @DawsonSField

DC US Attorney Jessie K. Liu charges FBI agent with providing confidential law enforcement information as part of a bribery ring.

washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
#ButNothingsHappening

FBI agent David Paitsel is accused of tapping a database restricted for use by law enforcement. Of course it is related to shady real estate transactions!

Supervisory Special Agent Paitsel was previously assigned to FBI HQ in DC, but is now assigned in Charlotte, NC.

The scheme involved a govt. program that gave renters first dibs to buy their houses if their land lord put it on the market.
A Swampy provision allowed the renters to sell their right to buy.
Allowing shady real estate people to swoop in & buy the properties...

This FBI supervisor was paying a DC employee to give him a list of the renters who had rights to buy property. He then used FBI databases to get their personal information to serve as a middle man selling their rights.

The FBI agent then provided the real estate agent information from the FBI database to allow them to contact the renter directly to make an offer!

In one case, the agent was paid $50k by a company looking to buy a property. The tenant got $35K, the FBI agent got $6.5K & the real estate agent kept the rest.

I guess all of those OIG efforts to find dirty FBI agents using information systems illegally are paying off!

@wtop provides more details than the Washington Post of course.
They identify that the scheme occurred between May 2017 & January 2018.
wtop.com/local/2019/04/…

He was using the investigation software named CLEAR to gather information on the tenants provided by the DC employee. That employee has not been charged so they must have cooperated quickly.
The agent was emailing the information! Genius!

I haven't been able to identify where Special Agent Paitsel worked within FBI Headquarters, so if anyone canf ind that data please let me know. #ButNothingsHappening

This FBI agent seems to be a ghost, I am finding almost nothing about him online from my usual searches. Found what is probably another person sharing the same name writing Never Trump stuff on RedState & a letter to Senate Judiciary complaining about corruption in Puerto Rico

His ghost status makes me wonder if he was doing counterintelligence work instead of chasing bank robbers. I found a LinkedIn profile by that name that has worked at the DOJ since 2009, so it may be him but includes no useful information on him.