Cash buried in L.A. politician’s backyard helped expose huge marijuana corruption scheme
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- A Baldwin Park council member’s $62,000 stash of backyard cash tipped off investigators to a pay-to-play marijuana licensing racket, turning a local “green rush” into a sprawling federal corruption case.
- Ricardo Pacheco was sentenced to up to 18 months in prison and must forfeit nearly $220,000, while former Compton Councilmember Isaac Galvan received 18 months and owes more than $320,000.
- Court filings depict a network of city officials, consultants and cannabis operators trading bribes for permits, campaign cash and contracts, implicating multiple San Gabriel Valley communities and fueling still-unfolding investigations into California’s legalized weed industry.
When the “green wash” of legalized marijuana was sweeping across California a decade ago, one local official tried to style himself as a gatekeeper for the new industry.
Ricardo Pacheco, a Baldwin Park city council member at the time, began meeting with other elected officials and new marijuana sellers, offering his services to smooth the regulatory challenges and foster investment, prosecutors alleged.
Authorities determined Pacheco was soliciting bribes and dug up $62,000 buried in his backyard in a search early in the case, marking the beginning of a sprawling corruption scandal that has spread through several communities. Pacheco wore a wire, resulting in six indictments involving more than 20 participants.
This week, the corruption scandal hit a milestone when Pacheco and another member of the scheme were sentenced.
Pacheco got up to 18 months in prison for bribery. Isaac Galvan, a former Compton city council member, got 18 months for facilitating bribes on Pacheco’s behalf. Pacheco agreed to forfeit almost $219,755 in illegal proceeds as part of his plea agreement, and Galvan agreed to pay $323,557.
Authorities said investigations related to the pot business in local cities are continuing.
Commercial cannabis resulted in corruption and questionable conduct that has rocked local governments across California, a Times investigation found.
Court records show the wrongdoing began when Baldwin Park started permitting cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and distribution in 2017. Almost immediately, Pacheco began soliciting bribes from businesses seeking marijuana development agreements and related permits in the city, prosecutors alleged in court documents.
In 2018, the FBI captured Pacheco in a video-recorded sting at a coffee shop, accepting bribes — $20,000 in cash as well as another $17,000 in contributions to his church and political activities — to vote for a police contract. The bureau then turned him into an informant.
Over the next few years, Pacheco wheeled and dealed his way through the San Gabriel Valley while wearing a concealed wire for agents, uncovering a scheme that would lead to charges and convictions for a half-dozen players in local government and a marijuana operator.
Among the six people he helped implicate were Galvan, a former Baldwin Park city attorney, a Commerce city manager, a San Bernardino County planning commissioner and a marijuana distributor, all of whom have been charged and pleaded guilty.
“Mr Pacheco accepts responsibility and is profoundly sorry for betraying the public trust,” his attorney, Glen Jonas, said. “He will serve his term with humility while continuing to make amends to his family, the community, as he has done consistently for the past eight years.”
Pacheco’s role in collecting cash in exchange for political favors was pieced together through the plea agreements of other defendants caught in the probe.
Prosecutors say the scheme involved a variety of officials in different cities helping firms get cannabis permits.
The scheme involved several public officials with specific roles to play: Galvan would be a “consultant” to the marijuana firms and make the connection with Pacheco.
Gabriel Chavez, at the time a San Bernardino County planning commissioner with his own marketing firm, would receive payment from the marijuana businesses and give Pacheco a cut, according to the plea agreement.
Robert Manuel Nacionales Tafoya, at the time the Baldwin Park city attorney, drafted up the legal documents that funneled the money from Chavez’s firm to Pacheco and worked with Pacheco to deliver the permits, prosecutors say.
A Times analysis of products tested, along with other data, suggests more than half of cannabis smoking products contain chemicals not monitored by authorities.
Tens of thousands of dollars were flowing through these interactions, the indictments show.
Chavez, a longtime friend of Pacheco’s, collected $170,000 from two marijuana firms for contracts and then paid him $93,000 in cash as Pacheco voted in 2017 and 2018 for the firms’ permits, according to plea agreements.
To bolster Chavez’s compensation for his role in the scheme, he even got a no-bid $14,500 contract from Huntington Park City Hall signed by one of those in on the scheme, prosecutors alleged.
In April, Chavez began a six-month monitored home detention and three years of probation after pleading guilty to bribery and cooperating with authorities.
When DW&F International Corpo. wanted to operate in Baldwin Park, Galvan offered his consulting services to the firm and facilitated $70,000 in bribes from company owner Yichang Bai, 52, of Arcadia, prosecutors said.
It was up to Tafoya to cook up the documents that funneled some of that money to Pacheco, authorities alleged. Tafoya arranged for five blank checks paid as bribes by a marijuana firm to be cashed with the help of his brother and passed one $10,000 check on to marketer Chavez, according to the plea agreement.
Last December, Galvan admitted paying the bribe and pleaded guilty to one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds and one count of evasion of tax assessment. Bai pleaded guilty to conspiracy. In July, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison and two years of supervised release and fined $3,000.
Tafoya resigned as Baldwin Park city attorney in 2022. A year later, he pleaded guilty to federal bribery and tax evasion charges. Tafoya, who served as an attorney for several municipalities and small authorities across the region, has yet to be sentenced and is cooperating with prosecutors. His plea includes an admission that he avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and used some of his gains to buy a home in Mexico. It also appears to implicate another past Baldwin Park City council member, but no arrests have been made.
In another scheme, former Commerce City Manager Edgar Pascual Cisneros provided $45,000 in bribes to Pacheco to secure a permit for another marijuana company and was promised $235,000 as part of the deal, prosecutors said. In November 2023, he quietly resigned from his role in Commerce and pleaded guilty to federal bribery. Last year, he received two years of probation.
According to Tafoya’s plea agreement, a onetime Baldwin Park politician who has yet to be identified allegedly requested $30,000 in cash payments to be funneled into their state campaign account through straw donors. The candidate allegedly wanted these small donations to “demonstrate to other donors his/her broad support in the community,” the plea says.
The official is not named in court records. The Times reported in 2024 that a plea agreement suggested the person fit the profile of State Sen. Susan Rubio. Last year, her office told CalMatters she was “not currently involved” in the federal probe.
A spokesperson for Rubio said she has been informed she is not the target of an investigation and she “volunteered hours of her time” helping investigators.
Asked to explain why the lawyer would implicate her, a spokesperson said, “Mr. Tafoya has apparently made allegations against numerous individuals in order to reduce his sentence.”
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