AT LEAST ONE DEFENDANT SAW DECENCY IN ASST. DA GARZA

(Click on graphic above to enlarge and read Gus Garza's funeral arrangements.)

By Juan Montoya

The March 2016 Cameron County Democrats primary elections were close, too close.

Incumbent Luis V. Saenz heard the footsteps of his perennial nemesis Carlos Masso who in 2012
had come incredibly close to beating him, just losing in a runoff election by a mere 351 votes of the 15,721 cast in that race.

But now, in the spring of 2016, many felt Masso had the momentum to finally defeat his nemesis.

In the newborn year of 2016, and with his political doom written on the wall, Saenz needed something – anything – to improve his chances. What he needed was a big-name arrest to broadcast the image he was fighting corruption.



According to sources inside the law-enforcement community, ever since September 2015, Saenz and his Public Integrity Unit headed by chief investigator at the Cameron County District Attorney's Office (and former DEA Special Agent) George Delaunay and Asst. D.A. Edward Sandoval  had been running a sting operation in the Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector's Office targeting head taxman Tony Yzaguirre.

Cleverly, it was called "Operation Dirty Deeds."

Pete Gilman, the head prosecutor in the D.A's Office, would try the case for Saenz. Assisting him in the prosecution was Special Prosecutor Gustavo "Gus" Garza.

The task force had enlisted a shady confidential informant named Melquiades Sosa to ingratiate himself into Yzaguirre's inner circle and give the goods on him.

They had Sosa by the short hairs because he had been indicted on nine charges of Tampering With a Government Document dealing with getting phony titles to vehicles. Sosa was a car dealer and dealt with the Vehicle Registration Department almost on a daily basis.

He made a deal with Saenz, Delaunay, and DPS Special Agent Rene Olivarez with the task force investigators that included the Texas Attorney General, the FBI and local law enforcement to bring down Yzaguirre and as many of his employees as he could.

When the indictments started to rain down on the tax office, some employees were caught up in the prosecutorial current and – regardless of the validity of the charges – were arrested, handcuffed and carted off in front of their co-workers and the public and led off to the Rucker-Carrizales county jail in Olmito.

One of them was Claudia Elisa Sanchez, a tax office employee whose husband owned a used-car dealership and for whom she did car appraisals. On March 23, 2016, she was charged with Tampering With a Government Document. It wouldn't be until February 9, 2017 before the charges were dismissed against her.

In a complaint with the Texas Department of Public Safety's Inspector General, Sanchez said Olivarez  and Saenz knew that:
(1) Sosa was the one that tampered and forged the documents in the title packets containing the Used Motor Vehicle Appraisal Forms in question;
(2) the signatures in these are not remotely similar to mine;
(3) the vehicles which he swore didn't exist, did in fact exist
(4) anyone from the general public, specially a used car salesman, could have access to my husband's dealer license information.

According to knowledgeable sources within the DA's Office, Garza had told Saenz that "there was nothing there there" to prosecute against Sanchez, and that the two came to a disagreement on proceeding against here, with Garza telling co-workers that he wanted to dismiss them before they went to trial.

Saenz disagreed and tpressed on for prosecution. It was the beginning of the end for Garza at the DA's Office and he retired shortly thereafter.

The ensuing media coverage of Operation Dirty Deeds led the voters who may have been on the Mass-Saenz fence to lean toward the incumbent.

 As televised arrest followed televised arrest, Saenz's chances improved markedly. By that March, the voters came out in the Democratic party primary and handed him a victory over Masso of 14,650 to 13,860, albeit still a squeaker with 27,510 votes cast in the race, a 790- vote margin.

Trying Yzaguirre and the other five tax-office employees was almost an afterthought. But that was when things got dicey. Due to massive negative media pre-trial publicity, a court granted Yzaguirre's motion for a change in venue to Nueces County.

There, a jury dismissed or acquitted Yzaguirre and the other tax office employees of a total of 40 charges alleged in the Operation Dirty Deeds, including dismissing the charge against Sanchez.

"Gus knew that there was noting to try against her and he told them so," recalled a tax office employee, an opinion shared by sources in the DA's Office. "He never changed his mind despite the pressure from Saenz and his administrators. In the end, he was right and tried to do the decent thing."

Garza died Thursday morning after suffering a heart attack in his home in Bayview.