He thought she must have won the lottery.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Natwar M. Gandhi, Harriette Waiters - Brief article

The District of Columbia's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, appears to be another subscriber to the style of management favored by General Weightman. His suspicions were not aroused when Harriette Waiters, an employee of his, was making $62,000 to $81,000 from 2004 to 2007 while she was driving a Mercedes-Benz, wearing a mink coat, designer suits, and carrying a different Chanel handbag practically every day. If he had been even slightly suspicious, he would have discovered that she had spent $1.4 million at Neiman Marcus--just one of the different stores she frequented--and that she had managed to deposit $8 million in the bank and buy houses worth $2.3 million.

How had she acquired these funds? She and a colleague had bilked Gandhi's office of...