L.A. County prosecutors filed two additional corruption charges this week against City Councilman Curren Price, who already is facing multiple counts of grand theft and perjury, allegedly for voting in favor of projects in which his wife had a financial interest, authorities said Tuesday.
In June 2023, Price was charged with 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest. Prosecutors said Price’s wife — Del Richardson, founder of the consulting company Del Richardson & Associates — received “payments totaling more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before [Price] voted to approve projects.”
The perjury charges stem from a claim that Price didn’t list his wife’s income on disclosure forms. Prosecutors also accused Price of theft by embezzlement, alleging that he bilked the city out of tens of thousands of dollars by placing Richardson on his city-issued healthcare plan from 2013 to 2017, before they were legally married.
In a statement issued late Tuesday, prosecutors said subpoenas issued since 2023 yielded evidence to support conflict charges related to two other votes that Price cast.
From October 2019 to June 2020, Richardson was paid roughly $609,000 by the city housing authority, according to the district attorney’s office. During the same time period, Price voted in favor of a “$35 million federal grant and a state grant application for $252 million,” according to the D.A.’s news release.
Prosecutors also allege Price authored a motion to give L.A. Metro $30 million from October 2020 to October 2021, a time frame in which Richardson was paid upward of $200,000 by the transit agency.
“Embezzling public funds and awarding contracts for your own financial gain is the antithesis of public service,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said in a statement. “Our communities expect and deserve better from their public officials.”
Price’s attorney, Michael Schafler, called the new charges “nothing more than an attempt to pile on to a weak case.”
“They have gone back as much as 6 years, combing through thousands and thousands of votes, to find a couple more allegedly conflicted votes, hoping that the public will overlook the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Councilmember Price was aware of the alleged conflicts when he voted for the agenda items,” Schafler said in a statement.
The original criminal complaint was filed roughly four years after a Times investigation found that Price had repeatedly cast votes that affected housing developers and other firms listed as clients of his wife’s consulting firm.
In an October 2023 motion seeking to dismiss the initial charges, Price’s legal team argued that prosecutors failed to show that the payments to Richardson had any influence on the councilman’s votes. Many of the votes described in the criminal complaint also were approved by an overwhelming majority of the council, meaning Price did not swing any one decision that could financially benefit Richardson.
Schafler also argued that the embezzlement charges are invalid because Price did not have control over the funds used to pay for Richardson’s healthcare, which is a required element of the crime under California law. Price’s conduct might meet the definition of grand theft, Schafler wrote in 2023, but the statute of limitations for that crime had long expired.
A judge rejected Schafler’s motion. Price is expected to face a preliminary hearing later this year.
Price, who was first elected in 2013, must leave office due to term limits at the end of 2026. Several candidates have launched campaigns to replace him in a district that stretches from the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown to 95th Street in South L.A.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.