The federal prosecutor’s office today filed an indictment against Jose Guillermo Rodriguez, a former adviser to Mayor Mayor, and six others for committing electronic fraud and money laundering offenses.
Among the defendants was former judge Arnoldo Irisari, who also served as city council legal adviser until 2019. Federal officials have filed charges against Steve Minger, Stephen Kirkland, Alejandro Rierra-Fernandez, Joseph Kirkland, Roberto Mazil Dallato and Eduardo Garcia-Jimenez. According to the indictment, Garcia-Jimenez also worked as a consultant for the Mayagis municipality and company. Mayagis Economic Development (Medi). Majil Tejado, according to the indictment, was a contractor who provided financial advice to the city council.
According to the indictment, between March 2016 and June 2018, the defendants conspired to plot to defraud the Mayagis municipality and MEDI funded the city council-owned funds. Similarly, the fraud arose after the defendants misrepresented the $ 9 million investment with the funds of the municipality and MDI. There are four criminal charges against Irisari: one for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two for wire fraud and one for money laundering.
For this project, the defendants would have used the existing 13 companies and other ghosts to obtain and transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars owned by the Mayakis municipality. These funds, according to the Federal Attorney’s Office, were made for investments only.
According to the indictment, an investment of $ 9 million arose between 2014 and 2016, earning a millionaire allocation to upgrade the Mayagis Municipal City Council’s shock center. Of the money allocated, Mayagis received about $ 7.87 million, which was transferred to the city council. Therefore, the municipality then transferred a total of 9 million to MEDI, which was created to promote the municipality’s economic growth and infrastructure projects – to invest as advised by Garcia-Jimenez.
Garcia-Jimenez promised the municipality that the investment would generate large economic returns with a return rate of more than 8%. After receiving $ 9 million, Garcia-Jimenez bought several bonds in the U.S. Treasury with an interest rate of 2%. Instead, Garcia-Jimenez – along with other defendants – transferred to personal accounts. The former consultant paid $ 1.8 million to the municipality and assured him that this would be the return on investment. However, according to the indictment, Garcia-Jimenez would have withdrawn funds from the initial investment of $ 9 million.
In many cases, Garcia-Jimenez would have transferred the funds to other bank accounts in conjunction with Stephen Kirkland, a financial adviser at Union Bank Investment Services (UPIS). After transferring balances to an account at LPL Financial, Garcia-Jimenez on several occasions tried to hide from individual C – the company’s finance officer – that the funds belonged to the municipality of Mayagis.
After several transactions with four banks, the defendants began withdrawing money from these accounts for personal use. Of this $ 9 million, Stephen’s brother and head of a financial institution, Joseph Kirkland, transferred about $ 10,000 to a personal account at Heritage Oak Bank; Approximately, 000 500,000 were transferred to Garcia-Jimenez’s personal account; 1. 100,000 to Stephen Kirkland and 14 1.14 million to Garcia-Jimenez’s account at Wells Fargo Bank.
In 2016, Garcia-Jimenez would have transferred $ 1.8 million to a Medi account, which convinces the company and the municipality that the return on investment was in fact $ 9 million from the original principal.
According to the indictment, the defendants used the money to buy property improvements such as a cruise ship, jewelry, clothing, tuition fees for a school, restaurants, utilities, credit card payments, home decoration, and the construction of a swimming pool. And payment on the mortgage.
Between April and December 2016, Irisari will also have received $ 126,100 From investment.
On September 28, 2016, Garcia-Jimenez asked one of his employees to send a letter to the personal finance director of the D-Mayagis municipality, indicating that $ 9 million more would be invested by Medi. However, these funds were no longer invested in accordance with the charge. In November 2017, Garcia-Jimenez again asked the municipality to maintain it for three to five years because it could receive an interest rate of 18% and earn about 3,87,300 per month.
In April 2018, Garcia-Jimenez reiterated to the municipality that $ 9 million was still intact and was ready to reinvest.
See the charge here:
21-082 Charge amended Issued by Puerto Rico Metro In the script
