Los Angeles Department of Water and Power station 28. (Credit Alex Millauer/Shutterstock)

A former senior attorney in the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office will plead guilty to aiding and abetting extortion for his role in a scandal over a water billing class action, part of a deal announced Monday by federal prosecutors.

Thomas H. Peters, 55, admits a plot to pay extortive demands from a woman who threatened to reveal the city's collusion in the lawsuit through documents she covertly obtained from the law offices of Paul Kiesel, who'd been hired by the city to defend against the lawsuit.

The newly released plea deal describes a courtroom spectacle in which a court employee rebuffed the woman's attempts to hand over the documents, so the woman approached a lawyer for PwC who told her to call him. 

"Kiesel's friend—acting at Kiesel's direction—then approached Person A and asked to reinitiate negotiations of her monetary demands to Kiesel," according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. Kiesel and Peters then went to Peters' office with New York lawyer Paul Paradis, another plaintiff's attorney hired to work the case with Kiesel, and Peters "reiterated that Kiesel needed to pay Person A's monetary demands to obtain the return of the documents, or he would be fired, which would mean significant financial losses to Kiesel and his law firm."

Kiesel paid the woman $800,000 over dinner on Dec. 4, 2017. When he told Peters what he'd done, Peters replied "good job," according to the new court documents. Peters also admits to later lying to the city' attorney's office about the payment.

A California State Bar member since 1993, Peters is married to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elaine Mandel, who is Kiesel's former law partner. His plea deal agrees to an offense level of 23, which for someone with no criminal history brings a standard sentencing range of 46 to 57 months in prison.

But it leaves room for prosecutors to recommend offense level reductions, and Monday's news release said Peters' cooperation is ongoing. His is the fourth plea deal announced in the scandal: Paradis has agreed to plead guilty to bribery, as has former LADWP General Manager David Wright and former LADWP senior cyber official David Alexander. 

Kiesel has not been charged with a crime. Like Peters, he is cooperating with federal investigators, prosecutors say, and Paradis has been working with the FBI since about March 2019.

Described by federal prosecutors as a "sham," the LADWP lawsuit was a conspiracy between Paradis and a now-deceased Ohio lawyer, Jack Landskroner, who Paradis had enlisted as plaintiff's counsel. Landskroner secretly paid Paradis $3 million after orchestrating an easy settlement with Paradis as defense attorney, according to Paradis' plea agreement, which was announced Nov. 29.

As a cyber official with LADWP, Alexander admitted to steering lucrative city contacts to Paradis' company in exchange for, among other benefits, a $1 million-a-year job as the company's CEO after he left LADWP.

Wright is scheduled to plead guilty Jan. 25. Paradis is scheduled to plead Feb. 1.