Two former parks officials for the city of Buena Park pleaded guilty Friday to embezzling $1.3 million by diverting paychecks from low-level maintenance workers and creating bogus contracts.
Rudolph Juarez, former parks and recreation chief, was sentenced to 10 years in state prison and Gabriel Garcia, a former parks supervisor, was sentenced to six years in prison by Superior Court Judge Roger Robbins.
Prosecutors said Juarez ruled the department with an iron fist.
“Anyone who complained didn’t have a job,” Senior District Attorney Marc Labreche said. “Juarez was cutting people’s hours, keeping them on the books and collecting their salaries. They were minimum wage bathroom cleaners.”
Labreche said authorities suspected the schemes by Juarez and Garcia spanned two decades, though they were only charged with the period between 2005 and 2011. He said the embezzlement scheme lasted so long because Juarez would punish subordinates who complained.
Labreche argued for a higher sentence for Juarez, 58, and Garcia, 42. He said each could have faced more than 100 years in jail for pocketing money meant to maintain the parks in the middle-class city of 83,000.
Attorney Jacob Brower, representing Garcia, said the city was partly at fault.
“The way they ran things in the city was pretty loose, which allowed Rudy to do this scam,” Brower said. “I don’t blame the city, but it’s certainly something the city manager should have caught years ago.”
Juarez’s attorney, Douglas Myers, could not be reached for comment.
The criminal investigation began in 2011 after Mayor Fred Smith received an anonymous tip. That same year Juarez retired from his $130,000-a-year job.
The probe, started by Buena Park police and taken over by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, found that Juarez was reducing the hours of part-time employees but keeping them on the books, prosecutors said. Juarez was also “hiring” ghost employees using the names of his family members and he had the paychecks sent by direct deposit to bank accounts that he controlled, Lebreche said.
Some of these phony workers received part of the money, he said.
In another scam, Juarez tripled the pay to a landscaping company contracted by the city, prosecutors said. This company, whose identity was withheld by Labreche, hired bogus vendors for jobs that went undone and directed the pay to Juarez and his accomplice, the prosecutor said. Some of the people whose names were used on these companies were unaware of the scam, Labreche said. Juarez also had the landscaping company maintain his own yard.
Additionally, Juarez billed the city for graffiti work that was actually done by another department, Labreche said.
At the sentencing Friday, Buena Park City Manager James Vanderpool told the court that “Mr. Juarez not only stole a tangible item, but he tarnished the city’s reputation and that of its hardworking employees.”
“Not only was Mr. Juarez stealing from the residents of this community, he was stealing from his fellow city employees, in particular, Mr. Juarez’s subordinates,” Vanderpool said.
Juarez, of Anaheim, pleaded guilty to 233 felony counts of misappropriation of public funds and four felony counts of filing a false tax return.
Garcia, of Chino Hills, pleaded guilty to 186 felony counts of misappropriation of public funds and four felony counts of willfully failing to file a tax return and of filing a fraudulent tax return. The defendants were ordered to pay more than $1.3 million in restitution to the city of Buena Park and more than $2.6 million in fines. Juarez must pay more than $235,000 to the California Franchise Tax Board, and Garcia must pay more than $89,000 to the tax board.
