AUSA SUROVIC CORRECT: CONFIDENTIAL FBI DOCS OUT THERE; THE TWO-EDGED SWORD IN C C-A-L #3 RACE

By Juan Montoya
As a federal judge deliberates on whether to grant convicted former Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos time to get his affairs in order before serving his 13-year sentence for his conviction on six counts of an indictment.
He was convicted by a jury on a count of racketeering, another count of conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and four counts of extortion.
Federal Judge Andrew Hanen sentenced him to serve 156 months in federal prison.

When Villalobos asked the judge for time to get his affairs in order, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory J. Surovic said  he had not provided evidence that he won’t flee or pose a danger to any person or the community if released."The government is aware that, during the period when defendant was pending sentencing, he contacted various individuals in the community and provided (FBI interview-summaries) that he had received in the course of discovery in his case, with the intent to harm individuals who had testified in his criminal case by spreading adverse information that would harm them in any political campaign that they might pursue,” Surovic stated in the government’s opposition to Villalobos’ release.“The government submits that this is an improper use of these discovery documents and indicates a desire for revenge on the part of the defendant,” Survoic further said.
Whether it's revenge Villalobos seeks, or whether there is a leak at the U.S. Attorney's Office, we can confirm that confidential FBI FD 302 (Rev. 10 6 95) interview-summaries are proliferating out there. In fact, we were given access to see one and we can confirm that someone (?) is mass producing them and making them available to select media.
In our case, the 302 dealt with the questioning of County Court-at-Law # 3 David Gonzales and his interview with Special Agent Mark J. Gripka and FBI TFO Albert Toriz. If  Survoic is correct, then the document was obviously made available to Gonzales' only opponent, Brownsville attorney Dolores Zarate or her supporters.
In this document, the agents seemed to be interested in Gonzalez's dealings with Person "G" (who later turned out to be San Benito Attorney Oscar De la Fuente), Villalobos, and Michael Trejo, among others.
Gonzales has never been charged with any wrongdoing in his representation of the San Benito School District nor in the forfeiture cases he handled in his court.
Gonzales is reported in the documents to have denied he ever gave any referral fees to Villalobos in return for his recommendation to represent a Houston law firm as local counsel. He says he paid referral fees, sometimes in cash as De la Fuente demanded, and paid federal income taxes on the entire amount.

However, the fact that the reports are out there indicates that someone with inside information (Villalobos?) may have purposely leaked the information to incriminate Gonzales of some wrongdoing.
It is instructive that a Zarate campaign video linking Gonzales to Villalobos was pulled after it had been delivered to various social media and the Internet. Those who saw it say it featured a photo of Gonzales with Villalobos.

And just as truth is a two-edged sword, information on Zarate's performance in a case involving the estate of 80-year-old Guillermo Buzzi-Matthews (2205-CGC-98-B), a wealthy Argentinian doctor who resided at Brownsville Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center. Zarate was appointed as his guardian by then-County Court-at-Law # 2 Judge Elia Cornejo Lopez. She had been ordered to locate the doctor's relatives, and later, appointed the guardian of his estate.
The information sent us indicates that her billing was at times exorbitant and that she charged lawyer's fees for mere errands. The upshot of the matter is that Zarate never found the man's relatives and it took Cornejo-Lopez writing the Argentinian Embassy to locate them. In the meantime – according to the documents – Zarate was charging questionable rates for minimal services such as:
* Feb. 13, 2006: $5,206 in ad litum fees
* March 27: $11,500 in guardian, estate fees
* 2006: In all, the court approved payments of $24,150 to her law firm that year
Whether the fees were appropriate is anyone's guess at this point, but some of the items charged to the man's estate do seem a bit extreme. For example, when acquiring a recliner and a mattress, Zarate billed the estate for these:
*  Feb. 13, 2006
– Visit to Lack's Furniture store to see furniture: $125
– Phone call to Lack's: $60
– Phone call to nursing home: $45
– Phone call to nursing home: $60
– Phone call to Lacks: $30
Not counting the actual cost of the items, Zarate billed (and was paid) $320 for calling and purchasing them.
The list goes on and on.
A call to make a dental appointment: $30. A second call, $30.
On Feb. 27 she went shopping for Jell-o cookies for the old man and charged his estate $105.
The next days she went to Burlington's to return some items, found the store closed, and charged him $25.
On March 8 she went to buy snacks at Walmart and charged him $125. 
On April 10, 2006, the court approved $5,000 for the hiring of personal aides even though he was paying for assisted living. The information packet says that one of those sitters was Zarate's sister.
On a political note, a Feb. 5 random sample performed by Dann Rivera's Victory Data of some 500 voters indicates that Zarate has at least 10 percentage points to make up to come abreast of Gonzales in the polling.
It is hard to tell whether the FBI 302 interview records come from Villalobos' discovery, and a note on the bottom states that the documents "contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI," but it is difficult to dispute the veracity of the Buzzi estate records and the charges made to it by Zarate and others.