THE FAJITA MORAL: CRIME DOES PAY FOR AUDITOR, BUYERS

By Juan Montoya

For nine years Gilberto Escamilla, 53, had Labatt Food Service in Harlingen deliver monthly orders of 800 pounds of fajitas to the Darrel B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center.

In those nine years, Cameron County would have us believe that neither his direct supervisor or the director of the center, its book keeper, nor the Cameron County Auditor's Office had a clue of what the lowly employee had been doing all that time. The theft totaled $1,251,578.

They would have us believe that it wasn't until 2017 that the Cameron County District Attorney's Office Special Investigations arrested Escamilla after a driver a driver from Labatt called the center to let the employees know that their 800-pound delivery of fajitas arrived.

Anyone who has had a kid at the center or has served time at the county's detention facilities knows that fajitas are never on the menu.

Escamilla, 53, who pleaded guilty on April 20 to theft by a public servant and was sentenced to 50 years in prison by visiting State District Judge J. Manuel Banales. 

He is now appealing the sentence claiming Banales erred by relying on an invalid order to accept his written waiver of his right to a jury trial, that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorneys failed to develop and present mitigation evidence for the punishment phase of his trial, according to the appeal, and that his attorneys failed to investigate the judge before advising him to let Banales assess punishment instead of having a jury assess punishment.$1,251,578.

As far as the Luis V. Saenz's DA's Office is concerned, the final chapter has been closed on the case even if the public is out $1.2 million.

Saenz blamed the county auditor – his nemesis Martha Galarza who caught him double dipping into his gas cards –  to tighten the controls and wonders why the scheme was not detected before.

Well, guess what? This year, the district judges weighed in on auditor Galarza's performance and rewarded her for her eagle-eye performance with a $3,818 raise. In Texas, county the auditor's salary is dictated to the county commissioners by the district judges in their jurisdiction.

The commissioners don't have a say so in the matter and complied, just they did in 2017 when they raised her 2016 salary of $124,798 to $127,296, a $2,498 raise. Ironically, that is the year that the DA's Office was alerted to the Fajita Scam.

There are other loose strings in this one.

Saenz said that there were at least two purchasers who bought the fajitas from Escamilla over that time but they were not indicted or charged, although they had to know where he was getting the fajitas a a cut-rate price. Were they owners of restaurants from San Benito or Harlingen? Perhaps Brownsville?

Could it be because they might be local business owners who supported Saenz in his past races? Or perhaps they are local elected officials? And more than one candidate for office from local city commissioners, constables, JPs and even for commissioners and county judge benefited from his "generosity" with free fajitas.

The public needs to know. Just as a buyer of stolen goods bears some of the blame for the crime, so do the purchasers of the fajitas from Escamilla. Did he sell the meat to them at discount prices?

Someone other than Escamilla obviously profited from the meat paid by the public. Who was it? Saenz knows.

A purchase order requires with at least two signatures to approve any purchase from vendors? Who was the other signer who voted to approve the purchases? The department director, perhaps?

The county could not collect on an insurance policy that covers such thefts because it had not done its due diligence to prevent it. As a result, the taxpayers are the ones who will foot the bill. Maybe if the auditor got 10 years and the center's director got another 10, it could offset the 50-year sentence Bañales assessed Escamilla and lower it to 10 years as well.

Crime doesn't pay, the saying goes. But at least for the county auditor and the purchasers who profited from the stolen meat, it paid off handsomely. Escamilla will probably rot in jail, but something else smells rotten in Cameron County.