Deep South Texas' long, ugly history of public corruption
A look at the cases that fueled the Rio Grande Valley’s reputation for political corruption.
The Rio Grande Valley's culture of compadrismo has often led its leaders down the path of public corruption.
For a long time, finding a path into Rio Grande Valley politics has meant finding a path to success, to security and to power. But for an equally long time, that path has led some astray, onto a path that has given the Valley an unsavory reputation for corruption. So many public officials have abused their oaths that in 2014, the FBI launched the Rio Grande Valley Public Corruption Task Force to investigate and “clean up South Texas,” according to NPR.
The taskforce was created in the wake of several notable scandals involving county sheriffs and other law enforcement who used their badges to shield drug traffickers, but it’s not the only kind of corruption. Read on for some of the most notable scandals over the past few years.
The Weslaco bribery scandal
In October 2022, a jury convicted a former Hidalgo County commissioner and a Weslaco businessman of a combined 70 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and bribery. Arturo “A.C.” Cuellar was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, while Ricardo Quintanilla was sentenced to nearly 17 years for their roles in an eight-year-long conspiracy that defrauded the city of Weslaco of $42.5 million.
The scheme ran from 2008 through 2016 and involved half a dozen different people, including several Weslaco city commissioners, a municipal judge from a different city, and several construction and engineering firms that agreed to pay millions in kickbacks. Cuellar’s cousin, John F. Cuellar, who was also an elected official, became a cooperating witness and got sentenced to three years.
Judge Rudy Delgado
Rodolfo “Rudy” Delgado was a justice in the 13th Court of Appeals based out of Edinburg. In 2019, a federal jury convicted Delgado of accepting bribes from a defense attorney in exchange for favorable outcomes during his time on the bench as a state district judge.
Like father, like daughter: Fito and Frances Salinas
Former La Joya mayor Jose “Fito” Salinas and his daughter, Frances Salinas De Leon, were sentenced to federal prison for a series of fraud schemes that U.S. District Judge Randy Crane characterized as part of a “culture of corruption” in the tiny western Hidalgo County town of 5,100 people. Fito used his position as mayor to appoint his daughter as interim director of the EDC, where Frances was able to fleece more than $340,000 for her own personal benefit.
The western Hidalgo County web
About a dozen people — including elected city and school district leaders, public administrators and more from Mission and La Joya — have been indicted, pleaded guilty or are otherwise entangled in the judicial process as part of a massive web of public corruption.
The scheme involved paying bribes to elected officials in exchange for their favorable votes on pricey energy contracts with an Indiana-based company called Performance Services Inc. Among those targeted were the Mission City Council, the La Joya Independent School District, and a water utility called the Agua Special Utility District. As part of a civil lawsuit, Agua SUD claims it lost about $12 million from loans it took out as a result of the scheme.
Charged, but not convicted
Then there are the public officials who have been charged with crimes but were ultimately not convicted. The most recent example has been Henry Cuellar, the Democratic U.S. congressman representing Laredo and Starr County. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued pardons for Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, for the dozen bribery, money laundering and conspiracy charges they faced.
In another case, a Hidalgo County jury acquitted a former mayor of felony election fraud charges. Richard Molina and his then-wife, Dalia, of Edinburg, became the public face of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s war against election fraud during their high-profile arrest in April 2019. Molina was accused of harvesting votes for the November 2017 Edinburg mayoral election by fraudulently getting voters to change their addresses to a place they didn’t live. Ultimately, the former mayor prevailed with a so-called “affirmative defense” in which his attorneys argued he had relied on “reasonable authorities” when telling voters to change the addresses on their registrations. In 2022, a jury acquitted Molina on all counts.
1 comment:
I was stationed there for 2 years. Almost like living in Mexico.
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