Former Baldwin Park, Commerce leaders secretly pleaded guilty in cannabis bribery scheme

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has revealed that Baldwin Park’s former city attorney and Commerce’s former city manager secretly pleaded guilty a year ago to charges related to their participation in a cannabis bribery scheme that has resulted in the arrests of nearly a half-dozen Southern California public officials so far.

The two men’s involvement was detailed in prior plea agreements, but the charges against them were not unsealed until Thursday, Dec. 5. Both Baldwin Park’s Robert Tafoya and Commerce’s Edgar Cisneros quietly resigned from their positions in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and have agreed to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

As part of the deal, Tafoya also pleaded guilty to evading payment of approximately $650,000 in federal taxes.

The plea deals with Tafoya and Cisneros follow similar arrangements made with former Baldwin Park city councilman Ricardo Pacheco and former San Bernardino County Planning Commissioner Gabriel Chavez. The FBI originally nabbed Pacheco during an unrelated sting operation during which Pacheco accepted a bribe from a police officer — working undercover for the FBI — in exchange for voting in support of a union contract.

Since then, the FBI has systematically taken down others who assisted Pacheco’s efforts to collect bribes during Baldwin Park’s rollout of cannabis in 2017. The former councilman was forced to turnover $302,900 in bribes, including $62,900 found buried in his backyard.

Tafoya and Cisneros facilitated the bribes to Pacheco to their own benefit, according to their plea agreements. Tafoya, Baldwin Park’s city attorney for nearly a decade, allegedly worked with Compton Councilman Isaac Galvan — who also has been arrested but has pleaded not guilty — to funnel bribes to Pacheco to secure a cannabis permit for one of Galvan’s consulting clients. Tafoya had family friends cash checks written by one of the clients, W&F International, to conceal the payments to Pacheco, according to federal investigators.

W&F International landed one of the development agreements in Baldwin Park. It was eventually shut down when the neighboring El Monte Police Department raided the facility for operating without approval.

Chavez, using a consulting agreement drafted by Tafoya, served as a middleman for Pacheco, accepting “consulting” gigs from cannabis clients and then cutting Pacheco in to secure his vote on the City Council. Chavez and Pacheco amassed at least $170,000 through the sham agreements from 2017 to 2019, according to their plea agreements.

Cisneros, working as a consultant for a different cannabis company, allegedly received $175,000 for his role and directed $45,000 to Chavez over the two-year period. The former Commerce city manager, who resigned in November 2023 just days after he pleaded guilty, told investigators that while he never knew “with absolute certainty” that Chavez was splitting money with Pacheco, he suspected it and “deliberately avoided learning the truth.”

He admitted that he knew if he did not pay Chavez, his client would not receive a permit in Baldwin Park, according to the plea agreement.

Cisneros, while serving as city manager in Huntington Park, awarded a $14,500, no-bid contract to Chavez’s company and made a $5,000 donation to a church associated with a school attended by Pacheco’s child, according to court filings.

“Discretion is a must for us and most appreciated,” read one email between Chavez and Cisneros.

Cisneros used his position in Commerce to solicit at least $25,000 in bribes for himself. An unidentified consultant working with clients looking to operate in Commerce secured a consulting gig for Cisneros with a cannabis company seeking permits in Montebello. Though Cisneros did not perform any work, the company paid him $25,000 and he told investigators he understood the money was meant to “influence” his authority over permitting in Commerce.

Cisneros received roughly $400,000 in extra pay as part of his severance agreement with Commerce.

Baldwin Park Mayor Emmanuel Estrada, who joined the council after Pacheco’s indictment, described the revelation of the charges against Tafoya as “disappointing” and said the city has spent years trying to unravel the backroom dealings now attributed to Pacheco and Tafoya. The corruption scandal has put Baldwin Park in a negative light, he said.

The former city attorney resigned in 2022 following Southern California News Group reporting that detailed the allegations against him. His attorney at the time denied that Tafoya played any role in the scheme.

Estrada said Baldwin Park, which hired a lawyer specifically to handle cannabis matters, wants to create uniformity among the operators and plans to weed out any who participated in the scheme. The drawn-out nature of the FBI’s investigation, going on more than five years now, has made it difficult to get clear information, he said.

“We’re definitely looking at everything, we’re going through all of the terms,” he said. “I’m confident that our legal counsel is doing their due diligence in reviewing any and all of our cannabis documents to make sure we’re on the proper pathway forward.”