Wednesday, October 14, 2009
BROWNSVILLE, Texas – The outspoken mayor of a U.S.-Mexico border city deposited a $26,000 check from the city to a vendor in his personal account last year and began a campaign to discredit the investigation when it came to light, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada, who is on trial for a variety of charges including theft, spent more than $5,000 over three weeks after putting the check into his account, authorities said.
Ahumada initially said he did not remember depositing the check. When the bank notified him three weeks after the deposit he asked the bank to investigate because he believed political enemies could be setting him up.
It was 'an innocent mistake' by a busy mayor on his way to Mexico on city business, his attorney Ed Cyganiewicz said Tuesday.
'He's not stupid enough to deposit a check that doesn't belong to him,' Cyganiewicz told jurors.
Ahumada had pulled into a commercial business lane at his local bank branch to make a deposit on Oct. 28. He endorsed the back of a $26,139 check from the city of Brownsville to Tarsia Technical Industries of New York for equipment at the public library and added his account number.
Teller Julio Salazar noted that the check was not made out to the mayor, but recognizing Ahumada he did not to question it and filled out a deposit slip, Brownsville Police Detective Jesse Pinales testified. Salazar later identified Ahumada in a photo lineup as the check's depositor. The account was for Ahumada's real estate appraisal business.
Later that morning, Ahumada crossed the Rio Grande into Matamoros, Mexico, and flew to Mexico City for a meeting about a river project.
The vendor contacted the city to find out why it had not been paid. The city then traced the check.
On Nov. 21, Hugh Emerson, a vice president at BBVA Compass Bank in Brownsville, called Ahumada to let him know that the security department would be withdrawing the money that was improperly deposited in his account. Ahumada came in that day to make a deposit so that there was enough money in the account, Emerson testified.
'He was very concerned that this check had been deposited to his account,' Emerson said.
What remains unclear is how the check ever made it from the city's finance department to Ahumada, who is serving the second year of a four-year term as mayor of Brownsville. The city of more than 170,000 is about 275 miles south of San Antonio.
Some city employees were expected to testify later Tuesday.
In his opening statement, Cyganiewicz said that if the teller had said something to the mayor about the check, there would be no trial. Asked if the teller followed bank procedure in filling out a deposit slip for Ahumada after seeing the check was not made out to him, Joe Hinton, the bank's head of security at the time, said no.
'He (the teller) shouldn't have done what he did,' Hinton testified. 'He shouldn't have accepted the deposit at all.'
In a voluntary statement that Ahumada gave to police in December, he said he suspected someone with malicious intent was trying to get him or he had made a mistake. He mentioned a private investigator that had been paid $5,000 to follow him and a mysterious vehicle that sometimes tailed him trying to catch him driving drunk.
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