Second Smithsonian parking lot worker guilty of stealing $400K

A second parking lot attendant with the Smithsonian museums pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing more than $400,000 in parking fees from a garage in Northern Virginia.
 
Freweyni Mebrahtu, 45, admitted to stealing the $15 entrance fee from thousands of museum patrons by unplugging the electric machine that counted the number of vehicles that entered the parking lot and pocketing the money.

The scheme, which lasted more than 3 years, raked in thousands of dollars each week — sometimes as much as $4,500 in a single shift.
 

Mebrahtu’s partner in crime, Meseret Terefe, 36, also pleaded guilty in September to stealing at least $400,000 while working as a booth attendant at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center parking lot, which serves as the annex facility of the National Air and Space Museum.
 
Mebrahtu was arrested in August and faces up to 10 years in prison.
 
She is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 18, 2013.

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