William Dunbar, a key adviser for Mayor Cherelle Parker\u2019s 2023 campaign, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges<\/a><\/p>\nThe campaign made a series of rent payments totaling $22,850 to his lobbying firm, Dunbar Public Affairs & Associates, between March 2024 and November 2024, according to campaign finance records. The address listed for the rent payments was an office in the Penn Center complex near Philadelphia City Hall. <\/p>\n
According to Dunbar\u2019s plea agreement, in February 2025 he \u201cfalsified certain terms of a lease agreement for office space that [he] had entered as the lessor with a Philadelphia political campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s online database of campaign finance records shows People for Parker as the only campaign that has made rent payments to Dunbar\u2019s firm. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe facts speak for themselves,\u201d said Aren Platt, executive director of People for Parker, declining to comment further on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Dunbar declined to comment. <\/p>\n
The plea agreement, which was signed by Dunbar and his attorney, said he \u201cfalsely modified the terms of the lease agreement\u201d to increase the notice the campaign was required to give him to terminate the lease.<\/p>\n
Had the campaign not discovered the change, the agreement said, Dunbar would have received money he was not owed. \u201cThe defendant\u2019s efforts in this regard did not result in his obtaining any funds, and he ceased making any efforts to obtain these funds before learning of the federal criminal investigation resulting in the charges in this case,\u201d the agreement said.<\/p>\n
Dunbar on Monday pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns for himself and his wife between 2020 and 2025 and claiming substantial refunds when, in reality, they owed money. Prosecutors said in court papers that the tax loss related to the fraud was between $350,000 and $750,000. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison, plus supervised release and fines.<\/p>\n
Dunbar\u2019s attorney, Brian McMonagle, said in a statement Tuesday that the plea agreement \u201creflects Mr. Dunbar\u2019s acceptance of responsibility for his own conduct.\u201d <\/p>\n
McMonagle said that the agreement \u201cdoes not include any cooperation obligations\u201d and that Dunbar is \u201cnot required under the agreement to provide information or testimony regarding any other individual.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four charges to which Dunbar pleaded guilty are unrelated to his firm\u2019s lease with the Parker campaign and the two other incidents of \u201cadditional misconduct\u201d that Dunbar stipulated in the agreement. The other incidents involve falsifying a document for a mortgage application and submitting false financial information to receive additional financial aid at a private school. <\/p>\n
Although those episodes did not lead to criminal charges against Dunbar, U.S. District Court Judge Kelley B. Hodge will be able to consider them when determining his sentence. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for January.<\/p>\n
Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min William F. Dunbar Sr., a former confidant to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,116080],"class_list":["post-276944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-william-dunbar-mayor-parker-campaign-lease-payments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}