Thread: 8 former city officials in Bell, Calif., reported arrested

Sep 21, 2010

8 former city officials in Bell, Calif., reported arrested in salary scandal

01:27 PM

At least eight current and former city officials in Bell, Calif., were arrested today in the fallout from a salary scandal in July that rocked the low-income city, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The eight include former city manager Robert Rizzo, Mayor Oscar Hernandez, the former assistant city manager, and several council members.

Los Angeles county Atty. Steve Cooley is preparing to announce criminal charges in connection with the case, the newspaper reports.

The Times quotes the mayor's neighbor as saying police broke down the door of his house and brought Hernandez out in handcuffs.

The salary scandal erupted after the Times disclosed that Rizzo was being paid $800,000 and some council members were taking home nearly $100,000 in pay.

The Times cites as a source for the reported arrests an unidentified person with knowledge of the case who was not authorized to comment publicly.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... -scandal/1

all 8 deserve to be arrested and charged with theft
the amounts of money they were taking in were ridiculous

Rizzo faces 53 counts; Bell was 'corruption on steroids,' D.A. Cooley says

[Updated] September 21, 2010 | 11:23 am

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley filed charges against eight current and former Bell officials Tuesday, alleging that they misappropriated $5.5 million in public funds. Robert Rizzo, Bell's former city manager, has been charged with 53 counts of misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest.

The charges come after a dramatic morning in which authorities swept through Bell and other cities, arresting former and current Bell officials.

Among those arrested were Rizzo; Angela Spaccia, former assistant city manager; Mayor Oscar Hernandez; councilmembers George Mirabal, Teresa Jacobo and Luis Artiga; and former councilmembers George Cole and Victor Bello.

"This is corruption on steroids," Cooley said.

[Updated at 11:28 a.m.: Cooley said officials used the city's tax dollars "as their own piggy bank that they then looted at will."

He said that councilmembers, who earned salaries of nearly $100,000, received $1.2 million for "phantom meetings" -- many which never occurred or lasted only a minute or two.

Police Chief Randy Adams, who also stepped down after The Times reported he was earning $457,000, was not arrested.

"Being paid excessive amounts is not a crime," Cooley said, noting that the investigation is ongoing.

Bail for Rizzo has been set at $3.2 million. Bail for the others ranges from $130,000 to $377,500.]

Rizzo, whose high salary sparked the outrage that led to the investigations of the city, was among those arrested in the sweep. At 10 a.m., officials emerged from Rizzo's luxury home in Huntington Beach. Rizzo, handcuffed, was escorted into a black SUV.

In Bell, a neighbor of Hernandez, said authorities used a battering ram on his front door after he failed to answer the door.

"They broke the door down," said the neighbor, who only gave his name as Jose. "They knocked down the door and they brought him out in cuffs."

The city of Bell released a statement about the arrests, calling it a "sad day" for the city.

“Given the sheer volume of charges levied against former Bell Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo and former Assistant CAO Angela Spaccia by the district attorney, it is clear that Rizzo and Spaccia were at the root of the cancer that has afflicted the City of Bell. Also, it is a sad day for Bell that four current and two former members of the council also have been arrested. I am prepared to double down our efforts to continue to restore order, establish good government reforms, and to ensure that Bell is providing needed services to its residents,â€

5 of 6 former officials convicted in Bell, California, corruption case

Published March 20, 2013
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES – Five former elected officials of the small, blue-collar California city of Bell were convicted Wednesday of multiple counts of misappropriating public funds by paying themselves huge salaries while raising taxes on residents.

Former Mayor Oscar Hernandez and co-defendants Teresa Jacobo, George Mirabal, George Cole and Victor Belo were all convicted of multiple counts and acquitted of others.

Former Councilman Luis Artiga was cleared entirely.

The charges against the officials involved paying themselves inflated salaries of up to $100,000 a year in the city of 36,000 people, where one in four residents live below the poverty line.

An audit by the state controller's office previously found the city had illegally raised property taxes, business license fees and other sources of revenue to pay the salaries. The office ordered the money repaid.

The guilty findings were related to the appointment of the defendants to the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, an agency that prosecutors had argued during trial served no purpose other than to pay them a salary.

All were cleared of charges that they illegally tapped public money while serving on the city's Public Financing Authority. The waste authority was never created legally and met only once in 2006, which boosted pay by about $13,000 per member.

Artiga was found not guilty of a dozen allegations. He was the only defendant who had not served as mayor at some point.

Artiga wept as the clerk read the not guilty verdicts against him, and he thanked members of the community who believed in his innocence.

"I feel righteous and I also feel nothing in my heart against the people that yell at me. I love `em," he said.

His attorney, George Mgdesyan, said Artiga was not involved in the committees where the corruption began.

"We were not there. We did not vote for these authorities, we did not vote for these raises," Mgdesyan said. "My client was there every day working for the city of Bell."

Prosecutors brought an extensive case involving about 100 counts.

After the verdicts were read, Judge Kathleen Kennedy noted there were 10 deadlocked counts and asked the foreman if the panel had exhausted efforts to reach decisions.

He said that was correct, but four other jurors told the judge they thought a verdict could be reached if they received more direction.

Kennedy ordered more deliberations after the lunch recess.

The current jury deliberated since Feb. 28, when one member of an original panel was replaced and the judge told the reconstituted group to start talks anew.

The trial was the first court proceeding following disclosures of massive corruption in the gritty town.

A lawyer for Hernandez said during the trial that his client was unschooled, illiterate and not the type of "scholar" who understood the city's finances.

"We elect people who have a good heart. Someone who can listen to your problems and look you in the eye," attorney Stanley Friedman said.

The scandal that rocked Bell raised the curtain on a fiefdom established by powerful former city manager Robert Rizzo. City records revealed that Rizzo had an annual salary and compensation package worth $1.5 million, making him one of the highest paid administrators in the country.

His salary alone was about $800,000 a year, double that of the president of the United States.

To fund his and other officials' salaries, prosecutors say, Rizzo masterminded a scheme to loot the treasury of $5.5 million. He and his assistant city manager, Angela Spaccia, face their own trial later in the year.

Witnesses at the former council members' trial depicted Rizzo as a micro manager who convinced the city's elected officials that they too deserved huge salaries.

He was said to have manipulated council members into signing major financial documents, particularly Hernandez who could not read what he was signing.

After the scandal was disclosed, thousands of Bell residents protested at City Council meetings and staged a successful recall election to throw out the entire council and elect new leaders.

Jurors heard more than three weeks of testimony and saw numerous documents. But when it came time to deliberate, things did not go well.

A juror who claimed she was being harassed by others on the panel acknowledged she had done research on the Internet about her jury service and discussed it with her daughter. The judge found she had committed misconduct and, after five days of deliberations, the weeping juror was dismissed from the panel.

5 of 6 former officials convicted in Bell, California, corruption case | Fox News

Ex-official pleads no contest to Bell corruption

AP 3:21 p.m. EDT October 3, 2013


Former Bell City Administrator Robert Rizzo listens in an L.A. court in March.(Photo: Irfan Khan, AP)

Story Highlights

• Robert Rizzo was charged with stealing more than $5 million from the modest, blue-collar city
• Rizzo is former Bell city manager who authorities say masterminded a corruption scandal
• Rizzo is expected to be sent to prison for 10 to 12 years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The former city manager authorities say masterminded a corruption scandal that bilked the working-class Los Angeles suburb of Bell out of millions of dollars pleaded no contest Thursday to 69 counts of municipal corruption.

Robert Rizzo, who was charged with stealing more than $5 million from the modest, blue-collar city where one in four people lives below the federal poverty line, is scheduled to be sentenced March 12. He is expected to be sent to prison for 10 to 12 years.

"Mr. Rizzo is trying to send a clear message that he accepts responsibility for wrongdoing," his attorney, James Spertus, told The Associated Press. "He made mistakes and he's trying to make amends for that."

Rizzo still faces federal charges and a civil lawsuit filed by the state attorney general, and Spertus said he plans to resolve those cases as well in the weeks ahead. He added that his client will fully cooperate with authorities still prosecuting others in the Bell case and would be willing to testify against his former top assistant, Angela Spaccia.

Both Rizzo and Spaccia were scheduled to go on trial Monday.

"Part of the resolution of all criminal counts in state and federal court is Mr. Rizzo's commitment to cooperate with authorities against Angela Spaccia," Spertus said.

Although a no contest plea does not admit criminal wrongdoing, Spertus said his client acknowledges that he made mistakes during his tenure as Bell's city manager and wants to make amends for them. He also wants to put the Bell episode behind him for his and his family's sake, his attorney said.

Rizzo was accused of masterminding a scam that set up a handful of various boards and commissions that did no work but existed only to pay him and a handful of other city officials huge salaries. He and others were also accused of illegally diverting taxes earmarked for other uses and of illegally raising property taxes to keep paying themselves the exorbitant salaries.

Five former City Council members have been convicted of corruption charges.

Rizzo himself had an annual salary and compensation package of $1.5 million when Bell fired him, making him much better paid than almost any public administrator in the country, including the president of the United States. He oversaw a city of about 39,000 people.

His no contest plea came less than a week before he and Spaccia were scheduled to stand trial together.

"Although we were prepared to go to trial and felt confident we could convict Mr. Rizzo of all charges, we are pleased he chose to admit his guilt and accept full responsibility for the irreparable harm he caused the people of Bell," District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...ption/2916999/

Posted on Monday, 12.09.13

Guilty verdict in Calif. city corruption trial

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BY LINDA DEUTSCH
AP SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

LOS ANGELES -- A former official in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell has been convicted of corruption in a case that drove the city to the brink of bankruptcy.

Jurors on Monday found former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia guilty of 11 charges, including conspiracy and misappropriating public funds.

She was found not guilty of hiding a public document involving the police chief's contract.
The judge declared a mistrial on another count after jurors deadlocked.

Prosecutors said Spaccia illegally gave herself enormous raises in a city where most people live in poverty.

She was left to stand trial alone after her former boss, Robert Rizzo, pleaded no contest to 69 corruption charges.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/0...alif-city.html

Bell corruption: Former mayor apologizes for 'my ignorance'

By Kate Mather and Ruben Vives
April 9, 2014, 11:02 a.m.

The former mayor of working-class Bell apologized in court Wednesday as he and four ex-colleagues agreed to plead no contest to corruption charges that could send them to prison for years.

“I like to apologize to the city of Bell for my ignorance, for not being able to find out how these people did this,” Oscar Hernandez said.
Hernandez, George Cole, Teresa Jacobo, Victor Bello and George Mirabal agreed to the plea deal and will return to court separately in June and July for sentencing. While each could be sentenced up to four years in prison, the judge could be more lenient.

Each of the former politicians also is expected to be ordered to pay restitution for their crimes. The city of Bell is asking the court to order the former council members to collectively pay nearly $1 million in restitution.

Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy told the council members that in accepting the deal, they will be barred from ever seeking elected office again.

“I don't imagine any of you are planning on running for public office again, but you will be precluded from doing so,” Kennedy said.

The plea deal effectively ends the prosecution side of the Bell corruption scandal, which enveloped the small Los Angeles County city in 2010 and left it on the edge of bankruptcy.

The ex-council members were accused of drawing extraordinary salaries by serving on boards and commissions that seldom, if ever, met. By the time they were removed from office in 2010, they were making up to $100,000 a year for their part-time work.

The case was part of a much broader web of corruption in Bell in which the city’s top administrator was accused of staging a relentless raid on the city treasury by paying extreme salaries, loaning out city money and approving contracts without City Council approval.

The five council members were convicted last year of misappropriating public funds, but jurors deadlocked on other charges, leaving the defendants in the position of accepting an offer from the district attorney or risking their fates in a second trial.

Even if they were acquitted in that trial, they still faced eight years from their previous convictions.

During their trial, each insisted that they had been duped by the town’s strong-willed chief executive. One, a former steelworker, even said he was forced to accept the generous paychecks and that his protests over the size of his pay were ignored.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...#ixzz2yQBAzRir

• Former Bell Police Chief to reimburse city for over $200,000 in tentative settlement
  
  3 MINS AGO

Every single one of these crooks are registered DEMOCRATS and Obama supporters. The "party of the poor", indeed! NOT! LMAO!

Former Bell second-in-command gets 11 years in prison for corruption

Angela Spaccia is the first ex-Bell official to be sentenced in the municipal corruption case. She also must pay the city $8 million.

Former Bell assistant city manager Angela Spaccia listens while her attorney Harland Braun argues on her behalf in Los Angeles Superior Court during her sentencing hearing. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times / April 10, 2014)

• Also
• 
• Pleas close a chapter in Bell corruption scandal
• 
• Bell: Rizzo sentencing postponed; attorneys want to question him
• 
• Spaccia could draw a longer prison term than Rizzo

By Corina Knoll and Kate Mather
April 10, 2014, 9:10 p.m.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge lashed out at a former Bell leader Thursday, sentencing her to more than 11 years in prison and branding her a "hog" for tapping the town treasury for her lavish salary while the working-class city slid toward insolvency.

Angela Spaccia became the first person sentenced in the municipal corruption case, and the lengthy prison term was the first indicator of how Judge Kathleen Kennedy intends to punish those convicted of misappropriating more than $10 million from one of Los Angeles County's poorest cities. Bell's former chief executive, Robert Rizzo, and five ex-council members await sentencing.

Kennedy also ordered the 55-year-old to pay more than $8 million in restitution to the city.

As she ordered Spaccia to prison, Kennedy — who has spent years sitting in judgment of those involved in the Bell corruption case — called the former assistant city manager a "con artist" who used the trust of residents as her weapon and never expressed remorse for her crimes.

"It was all about the money," Kennedy said. "Ms. Spaccia likes to portray herself as somehow a victim of Mr. Rizzo. She is no victim.... She got unbelievable amounts of money."

Kennedy made repeated references to an email Spaccia wrote to Randy Adams while negotiating his contract as Bell's new police chief.

"You can take your share of the pie just like us!!!" she wrote. "We all will get fat together … Bob has an expression he likes to use on occasion … Pigs get Fat … Hogs get slaughtered!!! So long as we're not Hogs … all is well!!"

"She became a hog, not a pig," Kennedy said Thursday. "And so now the day of reckoning is finally here."

It marked the first time the judge has publicly offered her opinion on the wrongdoing since she took the cases in 2011. Kennedy said initially she knew little about how a city was run and didn't fully comprehend the relationship between the council and administration.

"It was totally foreign to me and I spent years understanding the evidence," Kennedy said. "I went through every single exhibit in an effort to understand what was going on, what happened here."

What it came down to, she said, was unchecked greed.

"Ultimately what happened is that both Rizzo and Spaccia were not content with being pigs," she said. "They were hogs and they basically got slaughtered because you can't keep these kinds of things hidden forever."

Calling it an "extraordinary" case of mismanagement and self-dealing, Kennedy came down hard on Spaccia — whose annual salary had been $564,000 — dismissing a letter the defendant had written the court that listed some of her life's hardships, including caring for her dying grandparents and a son who survived a serious car crash.

"Her weapon is not the weapon that I usually see in cases that come before me. It's not a gun, it's not a knife. It's the trust that people had in her," Kennedy said. "She is charming, she is attractive, she is well-educated. She is not someone that you think is stealing you blind."

Spaccia, wearing a bright orange, jail-issued jumpsuit, her brown, wavy hair pulled back into a ponytail, shook her head as the judge spoke, but never addressed the court.

By the time Spaccia was forced to resign in 2010, she was cashing out 26 weeks of vacation and sick time each year, effectively boosting her salary by 50%. She was found guilty in December on 11 felony counts related to writing illegal contracts, receiving more than $200,000 in illegal loans from the city and helping create a pension plan for Rizzo and herself that would have cost the city $15.5 million had it been funded.

"They didn't meet a dollar that they didn't want to steal from Bell," Deputy Dist. Atty. Sean Hassett said of Rizzo and Spaccia.

But Spaccia's attorney reiterated what he had argued during the trial: It was Rizzo who was the architect of the wrongdoing in Bell and, because of it, his client had suffered "enormously."

Spaccia "wishes she would have never gone to the city of Bell," Harland Braun told Kennedy.

Braun also asked the court to compel Rizzo to testify Thursday, but Kennedy rejected the request along with a motion for a new trial.

Braun later accused Kennedy of bias and said he planned to appeal.

A half-dozen Bell residents who spoke in court blasted Spaccia, saying she had refused to take responsibility and had likely sealed her fate by not confessing and taking the plea deal that her former boss had.

"She was made into the hog because she was outsmarted by Rizzo's attorney and by Rizzo. They had to have a sacrificial lamb," Donna Gannon said. "She was just as guilty, but he was smarter."

Spaccia's supporters, however, said they'll stand by her.

"I can honestly say she's the sweetest, most kind woman that I've ever met in my life," said her boyfriend of five years, Scott Gould.

"Everything that she did there was meticulously reviewed by the city attorney. She was basically under the realm of Robert Rizzo. She told me, 'I would rather spend most of my life in jail than plead out on crimes I did not commit.'"

Gould said Spaccia had remained positive and in good spirits during their jail visits but that she had been wary of the sentencing.

"She felt the judge was going to throw the book at her," he said.

Outside the courtroom, residents thanked the prosecutors for their work. Bell Councilwoman Violeta Alvarez handed each a small blue pin with gold lettering. "City of Bell," it read.

"I wish we could give them a potluck or a trip or something," Alvarez said. "This is for them to remember how much we appreciate what they did."
corina.knoll@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-s...#ixzz2ybIf6CQG