Former City Officials in LA County Took Part in Cannabis Permit Bribe Scheme

Customers shop for marijuana products at a dispensary in Santa Ana, Calif., on Feb. 18, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Officials in the Los Angeles County cities of Commerce and Baldwin Park pleaded guilty in 2023 for their part in a scheme involving bribes for Baldwin Park politicians’ votes and sway over the granting of cannabis permits, it has been revealed.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Dec. 5 that Commerce’s former city manager, Edgar Pascual Cisneros, had pleaded guilty in November 2023 to federal charges over his involvement in a scheme to bribe local officials involved in the Baldwin Park cannabis permitting process. Cisneros had been city manager since November 2017.

Robert Manuel Nacionales Tafoya, Baldwin Park’s city attorney from December 2013 to October 2022, pleaded guilty in December 2023 to charges of federal bribery and tax evasion, the DOJ announced.

Federal prosecutors unsealed the criminal charges and plea agreements on Dec. 5. Both Cisneros and Tafoya have agreed to cooperate in ongoing public corruption investigations.

Cannabis Scheme

Not long after Baldwin Park started to issue marijuana permits for the cultivation, sale, and manufacture of marijuana within city limits in June 2017, Ricardo Pacheco, who served as a Baldwin Park City Council member at the time, solicited bribes from companies in need of the permits.

Cisneros helped a company acquire a marijuana permit and the necessary approvals by facilitating $45,000 in bribes to Pacheco. The company additionally vowed to pay Cisneros a $235,000 kickback for help procuring the permit.

Pacheco, who has a history of corruption, also admitted to leading bribery ploys with Tafoya, who was the Baldwin Park city attorney, and Gabriel Chavez, who once served as a San Bernardino County planning commissioner and pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge in November 2022.

Tafoya, who also confessed to evading $650,000 in federal tax liability, worked as a middleman in a bribery scheme between Pacheco and former Compton City Councilmember Isaac Galvan.

Like Cisneros, Galvan sought to secure a marijuana permit for a company by bribing Pacheco.

Law enforcement arrested Galvan and a consulting client named Yichang Bai in September 2023 on accusations that they paid $70,000 worth of bribes to Pacheco in exchange for his vote in favor of marijuana permits for Bai’s company, W&F International Corp.

Both men pleaded not guilty, and their trial is set to begin on June 10, 2025.

Pacheco faces sentencing in February 2025, while Chavez’s sentencing is set to take place in April 2025.

Pacheco’s Past 

In June 2020, Pacheco pleaded guilty to an unrelated federal bribery charge in which he owned up to soliciting and receiving $37,900 worth of bribes from a Baldwin Park police officer, who was investigating corruption with the FBI at the time. The payment included $20,000 in cash handed over at a Baldwin Park coffee shop.

The bribes also came in the form of checks made out to various organizations controlled by Pacheco, including a church and fake political action committee set up in other people’s names.

The police officer paid the bribes over the course of 10 months from January 2018 through October 2018 to vote for the Police Association’s contract, which Pacheco did in March 2018. As part of that plea agreement, Pacheco agreed to resign from his City Council seat.

An attorney for Pacheco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Flawed Process 

Corruption in the cannabis permit process is nothing new. In April, California State Auditor Grant Park released a report in which it highlighted shortcomings in cannabis permitting processes at the city and county levels.

It recommended processes to reduce the risk of favoritism and corruption, the use of background checks, and greater transparency.

In February 2023, Democratic Assemblyman Reggie Byron Jones-Sawyer asked the Joint Committee on Legislative Audit to review the permitting process at the local level.

“Allegations of corruption during the awarding of municipal cannabis operating licenses are far from new, especially in California, where tales of backdoor wheeling and dealing between companies and public officials have been circulating for years,” Jones-Sawyer said in a letter to the committee chairman.

And before that, in 2022, former Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia asked state Attorney General Rob Bonta to create a task force to investigate local cannabis licensing corruption.

In a post on social media platform X, she said her hope is that Bonta would investigate and prosecute any illegal activity tied to awarding the licenses.