Businessmen accused him of trying to shake them down. Money went missing in his political deals. And one of Dallas’ most prominent civil-rights leaders called him a con artist who betrayed the black community.

Over decades, Dwaine Caraway — the veteran Dallas City Council member known for veering between bluster and charm — weathered allegation after allegation, mostly behind the scenes. Until recent months, that is, when mounting evidence of his corrupt practices proved too damning to ignore.

On Thursday, federal authorities announced that the 66-year-old Caraway had pleaded guilty to taking $450,000 in bribes and kickbacks in the form of checks, bogus loans, horse-track junkets, and his trademark luxury suits.

After evidence of Caraway's wrongdoing mounted in recent months, he pleaded guilty to accepting about a half-million dollars in kickbacks and bribes. (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

Caraway solicited the payments and gifts from a Louisiana company in exchange for backing city ordinances that allowed it to land more than $70 million in contracts from the Dallas school bus agency. The firm's executives bilked the bus agency of so much money that voters shut it down last year.

The scheme echoes a broader pattern of allegations against Caraway that stretches back to 2000, soon after he filed for bankruptcy, according to interviews and a review of records by The Dallas Morning News in recent months.

As Caraway racked up IRS liens and dozens of other debts, he tried to intimidate owners of at least two southern Dallas businesses into giving him money, the owners and others have alleged.

The Reverend Peter Johnson, who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., said in an interview Thursday that he repeatedly told Caraway to stop squeezing business owners, to no avail. Johnson has long refused to make public appearances where Caraway is present.

The Rev. Peter Johnson, known as the dean of civil rights activists in Dallas and a former staffer for Martin Luther King Jr., says he has tried to stop Caraway from bullying business owners for years. (David Woo / Staff Photographer)

"The man's a con artist, and he finally is getting his due for hurting his own people,'' Johnson said. "But I'm disappointed in the black voters who send hustlers to represent people. I want to talk to my people more about the sacredness of the right to vote. Don't vote for people just because they're black.''

Caraway, who resigned from his council seat Thursday, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed for this article.

“As his attorney and more importantly his friend, I want the public to know that he has taken responsibility for his actions,’’ Michael Payma said in an email. “It is up to the court and God to judge what the repercussions of those actions will be.’’

One leader, two sides

The man who now faces seven years behind bars is not the Dwaine Caraway many Dallas residents saw.

Caraway cast himself as a warrior for the city's black communities, frequently evoking racism as a lingering menace to overcome, and working to bring jobs to overlooked pockets of the city.

He carved out unique, sometimes oddball, causes. He crusaded against hot-sheet motels and drug houses and helped shut them down. He fiercely fought expansion of beer and wine sales. And he targeted saggy pants with a "Pull 'em up" ad campaign that drew national attention.

Though his financial disclosures and other records reflect no clear source of steady income, he went in for flash, whether it was driving a black BMW or splashing his image on a campaign bus. He published a glossy wall calendar featuring pictures of himself.

A page from Dwaine Caraway's 2018 wall calendar. (Evans Caglage / Staff Photographer)

Earlier this year, his dubious side came into sharper relief.

KXAS-TV (NBC5) reported that he had accepted consulting fees from the Louisiana firm, Force Multiplier Solutions.

And an investigation by The News showed that a corporate donation he had brokered, allegedly to aid a long-neglected black neighborhood, never benefited residents there. Instead, the funds vanished under the watch of one of Caraway's political cronies.

Early shakedown claims

One of the first indications that Caraway was blurring the lines between public service and his personal interests came seven years before he joined the council.

In 2000, Caraway was serving as vice president of the Dallas park board, appointed by his wife, Barbara Mallory Caraway, then a council member.

He also was dealing with financial problems: His outdoor advertising business was failing and he had filed for bankruptcy protection from dozens of creditors demanding more than $360,000.

Racism, he told The News at the time, factored into his faltering firm: "When black people are seen making an inch of progress, white people come down on them. There are people who want to keep their foot on our necks.''

He started looking for different ventures, and tried to get involved in managing land at a small city-owned airport in southern Oak Cliff. That effort got him sued when the company managing the airport’s commercial development claimed Caraway and his wife had conspired to oust it.

The lawsuit claimed that the company — owned by Tennell Atkins, who’s now on the council himself — lost a city contract because Atkins refused to do business with Caraway and an associate.

According to the allegations, Caraway had demanded $3,000 to arrange a loan to help Atkins’ struggling firm.

Atkins agreed to the deal and ponied up, but then Caraway wanted more involvement in the company’s business, the suit claimed. Caraway also threatened to withdraw his wife’s support for Atkins’ company, it alleged.

At the time, Caraway denied the allegations. Atkins eventually reached an undisclosed settlement with Caraway. And a jury went on to award Atkins a $3.5 million judgment for the city’s wrongful termination of the contract.

In depositions from the case that The News recently obtained, Atkins said of Caraway, "I thought he was trying to shake me down."

The legal foes were both elected to the city council in 2007. Atkins eventually became one of Caraway’s closest political allies.

Atkins did not respond to an interview request for this article.

Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway (behind podium) and council member Tennell Atkins (second from left) became close allies even after Atkins sued him for "shaking me down.'' (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

'This will be on the house, right?'

A year into Caraway’s first term on the council, the owner of a struggling barbecue joint in Pleasant Grove sought his help. The restaurant and other nearby businesses had been hit by a string of copper thefts.

In one particularly brazen crime, thieves nabbed a large air-conditioning unit from the restaurant’s roof. In addition, the owners had to toss $6,000 worth of meat after thieves took the compressor from their walk-in cooler. Insurance stopped covering the losses, said the owner, Robert Lakey.

In an interview in May, Lakey said Caraway told him there was nothing he could do. A short time later, Lakey said, Caraway asked him for help — in the form of a campaign donation.

Lakey said he didn’t have money to give. Yet Caraway wasn’t deterred.

“But you have friends that could come aboard,” he recalled Caraway pressing.

Afterward, Lakey recounted, a white van pulled up to his restaurant, Lakey’s Smokehouse, and a bunch of people piled out. One of them was Caraway. The council member said they’d come to taste his barbecue, adding, “This will be on the house, right?”

Lakey told Caraway no, he couldn’t afford it.

Within two days, a city code enforcement team arrived at Lakey’s restaurant and forced him to close until he brought the kitchen and bathrooms up to code — another big expense.

Lakey, now 53, acknowledges he didn’t have evidence to prove Caraway sent the inspectors, though he informed Rev. Johnson, who in turn said he implored Caraway to leave the Lakeys alone. The timing of Caraway’s actions struck both of them as disturbing.

“I guess I stepped on some toes,” Lakey said.

Robert and Laura Lakey, owners of the now-shuttered Lakey's Smokehouse restaurant in Pleasant Grove, say Caraway tried to shake them down for money after they sought his help. Thieves kept stripping their business of valuables. (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

Lakey said Caraway had also suggested the restaurant move to a new shopping center down the road. Lakey and his wife, Laura, wanted to stay put. They told Caraway no.

“It’s a name I’ve tried to forget,” Lakey said.

The Lakeys were forced to close their restaurant about a year later. The financial troubles were just too big to overcome.

“We lost everything we had,” Lakey said, tears welling in his eyes.

Today, Lakey and his wife live an hour’s drive from Dallas. Robert is on disability, and Laura works in hospice as a nurse’s aide. Reached Friday, Laura Lakey said she believes justice has been served with Caraway pleading guilty to taking bribes.

“He won’t be able to do people that way anymore, thank God,” she said.

Vanishing funds

Around the same time the Lakeys said they were rebuffing Caraway’s request for money, the council member was able to drum up other donations — this time for a political crony’s organization.

The deal didn't become public until The News revealed it this spring. Caraway had persuaded a construction company that needed his vote in the summer of 2008 to donate tens of thousands of dollars to a community group run by his friend Claudia Fowler in Joppa, an impoverished black neighborhood in southeast Dallas.

The company wanted the city's blessing to build an asphalt plant there. Caraway won that approval while also securing the firm's pledge to give to Fowler's group. But those funds — about $72,000 — never made its way into community improvements, and Fowler declined to provide The News with an accounting.

Longtime Joppa resident Claudia Fowler (center) could not account for private donations that Caraway helped steer to her organization. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Community leaders were furious about what happened, but Caraway said he had no idea where the money went. Nor was he interested in investigating.

"All them fighting-ass people over there — let them continue to fight and say whatever they want to say,'' Caraway told The News. "I've been honest with you all. It's their responsibility to handle their own business.''

Caraway also found himself on the defensive about unaccounted-for funds in 2010, during his second term on the council.

The News reported at the time that $6,500 in contributions he helped distribute — as part of a campaign to fight expanded beer and wine sales — were not properly reported in financial disclosure filings.

During a profanity-laced interview with a reporter, Caraway couldn’t detail how he spent the funds. Such questions gave him a “black eye,’’ he said, when he was working hard “to protect our children and our communities and our schools and our churches.’’

In 2010, the IRS was trying to collect more than $60,000 in unpaid federal taxes from Caraway, records show. It’s unclear whether he ever made the payments.

Sham loans, agreements

About the same time, Caraway began publicly praising the Louisiana company's program to equip school buses with cameras to catch drivers who sped past as the buses stopped to pick up or unload students.

It was that program that ultimately led to Caraway's downfall.

Caraway's championing of a Dallas bus agency camera program led to his downfall. (Andy Jacobsohn / Staff Photographer)

Caraway championed approval of the city ordinance that allowed the company and the school-bus agency to ticket drivers. But in exchange, Caraway asked Robert Leonard, the company’s owner, for money nearly every week, prosecutors said, saying he wanted to gamble or needed to fix his car.

Leonard and some associates paid Caraway with checks that the council member cashed at pawn shops and liquor stores, as well as through sham loans and consulting agreements that funded a campaign bus, casino chips and gambling at the horse track.

Nearly half a million dollars in bribes and kickbacks flowed to Caraway between 2011 to 2017, according to court records.

A Dallas County Schools bus mounted with the cameras that were at the center of a massive fraud. The agency was shut down last year. (File Photo/Staff )

Caraway didn’t disclose the payments to the IRS on his tax returns — nor did he report most of the money on public financial disclosure statements that elected officials must file in Texas. What he did disclose was vague — such as a retainer of at least $25,000 from “Elf LLC Investments” — with no address listed. Elf, as it turns out, was a shell company used by Leonard to make payments to Caraway.

Other Caraway financial disclosures over the years also have been cryptic — like a retainer he reported in 2016 of more than $25,000 from "Marriott Hotel Downtown Dallas.'' No other details were listed. Caraway refused to provide The News with details of that payment during an interview earlier this year. Marriott officials declined to comment.

In a 2016 public financial statement Caraway listed a retainer from "Marriott Hotel Downtown Dallas.'' He provided no details. Marriott officials declined to comment.

Caraway’s practices raised enough red flags over the years that his colleagues on the council and others at City Hall should have called him on it, said Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.

“When you see someone on the council who’s pushing political decisions that seem unaccountable, they need to be challenged,’’ said Jillson, who has followed Caraway’s dealings closely. “It’s the responsibility of others who serve to blow the whistle on this kind of behavior, not just wait for the feds to come along and prove it.’’