Donna schools trustee pleads guilty, is expected to resign

McALLEN — Donna school board trustee George Hernandez plans to resign his position after admitting to lying to federal agents in an ongoing corruption probe, his attorney said Friday.

FBI investigators first arrested the 52-year-old public servant in May 2007 in connection with bribes he allegedly paid as a private consultant to members of the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school board.

His guilty plea Friday to one count of making a false statement to a federal agent makes him the last of 12 contractors and PSJA officials to confess to playing a role in a sweeping extortion scheme that federal prosecutors say governed school repair work, construction of new buildings and insurance contracts for at least six years.

“I expect he will tender his resignation fairly soon,” Hernandez’s attorney L. Aron Peña said.

HISTORY OF BRIBERY

Former PSJA superintendent Arturo Guajardo and four former board members have already pleaded guilty to charges ranging from extortion to conspiracy.

From 1998 to 2004, the officials accepted cash payments totaling more than $600,000, paid vacations, concert tickets and in some cases even the services of prostitutes from a group of nine contractors seeking business with the district.

According to a May 2007 indictment, Hernandez served as a middleman between PSJA board members and an unnamed general construction contractor, who is identified in court documents only as “Contractor Two.”

Hernandez purportedly paid the elected officials thousands of dollars in kickbacks, escorted them on trips to Las Vegas and picked up their tabs for air travel, hotel rooms, gambling and concert tickets.

He then faxed memos to Contractor Two, who was bankrolling the trips, to report on opinions and information he gathered, the indictment alleges.

But under the plea agreement he finalized with the government Friday, Hernandez did not specifically admit to any of those allegations. Instead, he confessed only to lying about meetings he had with this contractor after the FBI had already started its investigation.

Hernandez told agents he hadn’t had any contact with Contractor Two since a June 2006 raid on the man’s business and home; however, investigators recorded three subsequent meetings in which the pair discussed what they should tell the FBI to avoid incriminating themselves, Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Eastepp said.

CONTRACTOR TWO

Eastepp declined Friday to name Contractor Two, who has not been charged in any of the four indictments connected with the case.

But court documents and public records suggest that man may be Guadalupe Escobedo, owner of two Cameron County contracting businesses: American Contracting USA and American Roofing.

According to an indictment, the PSJA school board voted May 27, 2003, to award American Contracting a $540,000 project to re-roof the vocational building at San Juan Middle School. Minutes of the public meeting on that date indicate the contract went to Escobedo’s company.

FBI agents raided both of Escobedo’s businesses and his home in Combes on June 1, 2006 — the same date Eastepp cited Friday as the day investigators showed up on Contractor Two’s doorstep.

 Escobedo could not be reached for comment.

CONSEQUENCES

Hernandez’s planned resignation would bring to an end a decade-long tenure on the Donna school board during which he served as the body’s president for several years.

Although the criminal charges he faced in the PSJA case were not connected to his work as a schools trustee, Hernandez also drew scrutiny in his elected capacity.

Last month, a federal jury ordered him to pay $10,000 to one of the Donna school system’s former superintendents after finding that Hernandez and other elected officials conspired to illegally fire the administrator for political reasons.

The verdict also cost the school district more than $1 million.

Hernandez now faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines at a sentencing hearing scheduled in March.

The other 11 defendants in the PSJA case are all scheduled for punishment hearings starting early next year.

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.