The Department of Justice on Thursday released a plea deal that says political consultant Melahat Rafiei attempted to defraud a cannabis dispensary client associated with her firm. Rafiei also admitted to agreeing to bribe two Irvine City Council members, according to court documents.

Rafiei, 45, of Anaheim, has agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of attempted wire fraud, federal prosecutors said.

Rafiei is the owner and founder of Progressive Solutions Consulting, a Long Beach-based political consulting firm, and served as executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party from 2007 to 2009. She is the former secretary of the California Democratic Party and was a state representative to the Democratic National Committee.

In a written statement provided to the Register ahead of the DOJ announcement, Rafiei said, “It was never my intention to harm anyone.” Her attorney, Alaleh Kamran, pointed to that written statement on Thursday, only adding: “I’ll reserve my comments for sentencing.”

According to the plea agreement, Rafiei said she agreed to give at least $225,000 in bribes to a pair of Irvine councilmembers in 2018 in exchange for getting them to introduce and pass a city ordinance that would allow her clients to open a retail cannabis store in Irvine. The two councilmembers were not named in the court documents; no current councilmembers were serving at that time. No allegations against the two councilmembers were documented in the plea agreement.

In April 2018, Rafiei offered to introduce an individual employed in the medical cannabis industry to an Irvine politician, only identified in court documents as “Elected Official 1,” prosecutors said. The person employed in the medical cannabis industry was a confidential source working with the FBI, unbeknownst to Rafiei, prosecutors said.

The following month, Rafiei met with that unnamed elected official to discuss introducing an ordinance that would legalize retail medical cannabis and ultimately benefit her client’s business, the plea agreement says.

Rafiei says, in the plea agreement, that she and the elected official told the client and his business partner they planned to use a separate member of the Irvine City Council — identified in court documents as “Elected Official 2” — to introduce the ordinance.

Following this meeting, Rafiei asked the individual’s business partner, in a phone call that was recorded, to pay her between $350,000 and $400,000 in exchange for getting the cannabis ordinance introduced, according to the agreement.

Rafiei told the business partner that the “bribe payments” would need to be disguised as attorney fees for legal services provided by her various public affairs and campaign management companies to circumvent the elected officials’ financial disclosure requirements, the plea agreement says. In June 2018, Rafiei says a contract was drafted between herself and the second elected official, which included a $25,000 retainer for “legal services,” according to the plea agreement.

Later, Rafiei told the individual’s business partner that the first elected official asked for about $200,000 and the second for $25,000, the plea agreement says.

The Register previously reported that Irvine-based Terra Tech had hired Rafiei to lobby the city of Irvine for favorable cannabis laws. But the company then worked with the FBI, alleging she had begun to “devise a scheme” to bribe two Irvine councilmembers.

In addition to what was going on in Irvine, Rafiei also falsely told a commercial cannabis company owner in 2019 that, in exchange for a payment of at least $300,000, she would work to have Anaheim pass a cannabis-related ordinance that would benefit that person’s business, according to the plea agreement.

She falsely told that person, who was a second confidential source working with the FBI unbeknownst to her, that $200,000 of that payment would go to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, but she actually planned to split it equally between herself and an unnamed associate not affiliated with the chamber, the plea agreement says.

“While we are aware of this, it does not directly involve our city and appears related to outside efforts to lobby cities for changes in cannabis rules, which Anaheim’s City Council rejected in 2020,” Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster said.

When contacted by the Register Thursday, former Councilmembers Christina Shea and Don Wagner, who served during the time period, both said they had not been approached by Rafiei or offered a bribe. Wagner, now a member of the OC Board of Supervisors, said he was unaware of who she was referring to in her plea agreement but noted: “The city never did pass whatever resolution she was asking for.”

The other former councilmembers, Melissa Fox, Jeff Lalloway and Lynn Schott, could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.

Current Mayor Farrah Khan told the Register the situation “doesn’t involve me.” Councilmember Kathleen Treseder said she would call for an investigation into potential criminal activity involving Irvine.

A statement released by the city said the council will discuss “this matter” at their meeting Tuesday and “in the meantime, the city will continue to monitor the situation moving ahead.”

As part of the proposed plea deal, Rafiei and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California all agreed to the details accounting of what occurred as laid out in support of the agreement.

Rafiei is expected to make her initial appearance in the United States District Court in Santa Ana on Feb. 6. Once Rafiei enters her guilty plea, she could face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

Rafiei told the Register ahead of the DOJ’s announcement that she agreed to the plea deal in hopes that the judge would take into consideration the role she played in uncovering broader scandals during sentencing.

“I have made this painful choice by weighing my options, the most important of which was the care and custody of my son,” Rafiei said. “I know this option will bring certainty, closure and a path forward.”

She was helping run campaigns for a number of elected officials and was a prominent consultant for the local cannabis industry until May of last year. That’s when news broke that she’d been arrested in 2019 on charges of “theft or bribery” involving federal funds related to a cannabis scheme and that she later had been assisting the FBI with a related investigation.

That probe led to federal charges against former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Ament. Then Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu also resigned. At that time, the Anaheim City Council voided a $320 million deal to sell Angel Stadium to a business partnership created by the team’s owner Arte Moreno, as the release of wiretap transcripts appeared to support allegations of a self-described “cabal” of business and political leaders that had been exerting “significant influence” over how the city was run.

Sidhu has not been charged with any crimes, and his attorney has maintained that a fair and impartial investigation would find no wrongdoing.