A former confidant to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker tried to bilk campaign for rent money, court document shows
Philadelphia lobbyist William Dunbar pleaded guilty this week to filing false tax returns to understate the amount he owed the IRS.
William F. Dunbar Sr., a former confidant to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker who pleaded guilty this week to federal tax fraud charges, also sought to bilk a political campaign out of rent payments he was not entitled to, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
The document does not name the campaign, but it appears to be Parker’s.
Dunbar, 42, never actually received any ill-gotten funds related to the lease with the campaign, prosecutors said, and he was not charged in connection with the matter.
But prosecutors said in court documents that he’s agreed to let a judge consider the episode and two other incidents of “additional misconduct” as she weighs his sentence for tax fraud.
Dunbar, a Philadelphia lobbyist, was an unpaid but important adviser to Parker during her winning campaign for mayor in 2023. He officially joined her campaign, People for Parker, around the time she took office in January 2024.
The mayor let Dunbar go from her campaign in July 2024 in a move that Dunbar at the time described as Parker’s decision.
The 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.
According to Dunbar’s plea agreement, in February 2025 he “falsified certain terms of a lease agreement for office space that [he] had entered as the lessor with a Philadelphia political campaign.”
The city’s online database of campaign finance records shows People for Parker as the only campaign that has made rent payments to Dunbar’s firm.
“The facts speak for themselves,” said Aren Platt, executive director of People for Parker, declining to comment further on Tuesday.
Dunbar declined to comment.
The plea agreement, which was signed by Dunbar and his attorney, said he “falsely modified the terms of the lease agreement” to increase the notice the campaign was required to give him to terminate the lease.
Had the campaign not discovered the change, the agreement said, Dunbar would have received money he was not owed. “The defendant’s 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,” the agreement said.
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.
Dunbar’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, said in a statement Tuesday that the plea agreement “reflects Mr. Dunbar’s acceptance of responsibility for his own conduct.”
McMonagle said the agreement “does not include any cooperation obligations” and that Dunbar is “not required under the agreement to provide information or testimony regarding any other individual.”
The four charges to which Dunbar pleaded guilty are unrelated to his firm’s lease with the Parker campaign and the two other incidents of “additional misconduct” 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.
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.
Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article.
