City Dispatcher Sentenced to 14 Months for Leading a Bribery Scheme

U.S. Attorney’s Office
21 October 2014

PHILADELPHIA—Dorian Parsley, 44, of Philadelphia, formerly a dispatcher with the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD), was sentenced today to 14 months in prison for conspiracy, solicitation of a bribe, and honest services fraud in connection with a scheme by which she gave an unfair advantage to certain tow truck operators in exchange for cash bribes. Parsley pleaded guilty to the charges on July 21, 2014. In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Eduardo C. Robreno ordered a $1,000 fine, one year of supervised release, and a $300 special assessment.

Between February 2011 and December 2013, Parsley operated a bribery scheme through which she collected weekly payments totaling more than $35,000 from three tow truck operators, now her co-defendants, in exchange for providing them with certain confidential information, including accident and disabled vehicle locations, and the personal identifying information of accident victims. Parsley did this by secretly sending text messages from her personal cellphone, in a purposeful end-run around PPD policies and procedures. In this way, the defendant provided an unfair economic advantage to her bribers, at the expense of other tow truck operators who relied on the proper functioning of the PPD’s rotational towing program.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Philadelphia Police Department. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Kevin Brenner and Jennifer Chun Barry.