Former Member of Baldwin Park City Council to Be Sentenced in August

Former Member of Baldwin Park City Council to Be Sentenced in August

by Contributing Editor

A former member of the Baldwin Park City Council faces sentencing Aug. 2 for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes — including $20,000 in cash — from a local police officer working at the FBI’s direction, in exchange for his support of a city contract.

Ricardo Pacheco, 58, of Baldwin Park, who was elected to the city council in 1997 and served as mayor pro tempore in 2018, pleaded guilty in June to a federal bribery charge, which carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal information against Pacheco, as well as portions of a plea agreement in which he agreed to fully cooperate in ongoing public corruption investigations. The unsealed plea agreement filed in Los Angeles federal court contains a redacted statement of facts to protect the integrity of ongoing aspects of those investigations.

In the documents unsealed this week, Pacheco admitted to soliciting and receiving a total of $37,900 in bribes from a Baldwin Park police officer from January through October 2018 to support and vote for the Police Association’s contract, which was worth at least $4.4 million over three years, the DOJ said.

The police officer who made the payments did so at the direction of the FBI after he and another officer approached the FBI and agreed to assist in its ongoing corruption investigation. In exchange for the payments, Pacheco voted in favor of the Police Association contract in March 2018, according to the DOJ.

The payments to Pacheco included a $20,000 cash bribe in October 2018, which the police officer provided to him in an envelope in a Baldwin Park coffee shop. Pacheco also solicited and received $17,900 in checks that he directed be made out to his church and sham political action committees he had set up using other individuals’ names but which he controlled, court papers show.

As part of his plea agreement, Pacheco agreed to resign from his council seat, which he did in June. Pacheco also agreed to forfeit $83,145 in cash proceeds seized by the FBI, which included $62,900 that Pacheco said he had buried in his backyard in two locations.

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All credit goes to Contributing Editor
Originally published on https://mynewsla.com