DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES: SAENZ, TORRES, BESTEIRO

By Juan Montoya
Remember how the fervor of prosecuting someone for the missing $21 million in the Port of Brownsville's Bridge Nowhere kind of died down after the demise of Port Director Raul Besteiro?
Inevitably, when the question arose over who had authorized the expenditures of millions to Mexican contractors or to pay $1 million "success" bonuses to Dannenbaum Engineering, the finger always seemed to turn towards the late port director.
In the end, it took the creatively criminal endeavors of convicted former Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos to strong-arm $1 million from Dannenbaum in exchange for a statement clearing them of any wrongdoing. Think what you want of Mando, but he made Dannenbaum fork over the million with that maneuver.
Lately we've had a spate of the meeses nibbling away at the cheese at the county level. If it's not the clerk for the District Clerk pilfering child support payments, it's the clerk of a JP charged with taking bribes on behalf of the office holder to grant favorable decisions, or to do away with community service. The District Clerk employee just happened to be related to an Asst. D.A. and the case was resolved quietly.
The latest twist involved the re-opened a case against  Joanne Cisneros, 36. Investigators say that Cisneros stole more than $80,000 while working as the office administrator for the late Justice of the Peace Tony Torres.
They say that the thefts were committed December 2006 to March 2010.
According to the DA's website and police reports, a county audit revealed that monies were missing and that it was discovered that Cisneros was responsible for the daily bank deposits and had stolen payments made to that office.
"In 2010, the Brownsville Police Department handled the investigation and filed the case with the D.A.’s Office,” District Attorney Luis.V. Saenz said. "The prior administration rejected the case. We re-opened the case that led to the defendant being indicted. We did not want the defendant to think she had gotten away with stealing from the taxpayers."
That's interesting because we remember that there were more than one person involved in that case. Further, we also heard that Cisneros had at first agreed to cooperate with the investigators and owed up to the charges, but that she withdrew her cooperation when they tried to blame her for theft of the entire amount.
In the more recent case involving Liliana Cantu, the clerk for Erin Garcia Hernandez, the woman has said in the past that she intends to take some people down with her if she is blamed for all the allegations in the bribery and the tampering of a government document.
In fact, the bribery indictments state that Cantu was procuring the bribes on behalf of her boss on at least two occasions. That trial will be interesting to attend to see whether Erin will take the stand and blame the clerk for the malfeasance in her office.
We remember a former president who said "the buck stops here" and took responsibility for what went on in his office. Local office holders apparently don't believe in that dictum.
Local attorneys say that the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" defense could also work in the Cisneros case. They say that if Cisneros maintains that she did everything on the orders of the late Tony Torres, it will be difficult to prove otherwise. How would investigators and prosecutors impeach Cisneros' testimony, if she  is allowed to testify from the stand? Torres is long gone.
The case is going on five years old and witnesses have a way of forgetting things over time. We have heard that there is a forgotten case involving the adopted son of an Asst. D.A. which was swept under the rug after he had been caught taking bribes to lower bonds, too. In that case, we hear that a district judge asked Villalobos to let him handle it "internally," and Mando acquiesced.
Will that case also be (as in the Tale of Two Cities) be brought "back to life" as well? Or will it be only the lowly clerks with no influential relatives who are prosecuted?