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Law enforcement with the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association arrested an Edinburg man Thursday for theft, the latest in a string of arrests since October that all stem from him allegedly cheating his partners in the cattle business out of upwards of $200,000.
Documents from those arrests describe allegations going back to 2019, claiming Phillip Drake, 38, would feed partners in the cattle business months-long strings of lies and unfounded promises, all the while taking possession of those partners’ money or cattle.
Eventually, the documents say, those partners realized that the herds of cattle they thought were accumulating tens of thousands of dollars never existed or that the actual cattle had disappeared.
Drake’s latest charge is theft of property between $30,000 and $150,000, a third-degree felony. He was released from the Hidalgo County Jail on bond Saturday morning.
A criminal complaint says Drake’s latest theft charge stemmed from allegedly conning an elderly man out of $72,301.55 after convincing him to enter the cattle business with Drake.
According to the complaint, a man named Pablo Garza paid a visit to a ranch Drake was leasing on Farm-to-Market Road 490 in Edinburg in October 2020 and Drake suggested they go into the cattle business together.
“With the picture that Drake painted, Pablo decided to go in on the business,” the complaint said. “The deal was that Pablo would pay for 50% of the cattle being purchased, the cattle would be fed, cared [for] and bred and then resold.”
Between October 2020 and May 2021, Garza made eight payments to Drake that added up to that $72,301.55 for a variety of supposed cow purchases.
All told, the complaint said, Garza understood he was part owner of just north of 2,000 head of cattle.
One of those eight transactions links Drake’s arrest on Thursday to his arrests late last year.
The complaint says Garza gave Drake $35,000, believing the money was being used to purchase cattle that belonged to a man named Roy Ruiz.
But Drake was charged with stealing 37 head of cattle from Ruiz in November. Court documents say the cows had been pastured on Drake’s land, but when Ruiz went to claim them, they were nowhere to be found.
Around the time Ruiz was asking to get his cows back in September, Drake reported being tied up and assaulted, but Hidalgo County Sheriff J.E. “Eddie” Guerra later said those claims were unfounded.
It’s unclear whether that incident is related to any of Drake’s arrests.
TSCRA Special Ranger Joe Aguilar, who arrested Drake all three times, previously said Drake used Ruiz’s cows as pawns in schemes with other would-be cattlemen.
In addition to Pablo Garza, Salvador Garza III also fell victim to that ploy. Drake was arrested in October for also allegedly stealing from Salvador Garza.
The latest arrest documents also say that on five occasions Garza paid Drake directly for cattle he understood they were going Dutch on.
On one of those occasions, the complaint says Garza paid Drake $10,000 for the purchase of cattle from Rio Beef Feed Yard, but according to the feed yard, Drake never bought any cattle there.
On two occasions, the complaint says Garza paid the Edinburg Livestock Auction for cattle he said were shipped to Drake’s ranch on FM 490, but after several months he “never saw those cattle again.” According to the complaint, Garza said he also paid a man named Miguel Limon for 26 head of cattle; those too were shipped to Drake’s ranch before disappearing, he said.
“Through investigation it was determined that Drake had solicited Pablo’s money with promises of a big cash return,” documents said.
Those three arrests are not Drake’s first allegations of cattle-crime. He was arrested in Starr County in 2019 for allegedly stealing a small number of cattle.
Aguilar previously described the scale of the alleged scheme as significant, though not unheard of.
Despite the arrests, Drake has not necessarily shied from the public eye.
In December, posters popped up around Edinburg announcing Drake’s candidacy for Texas State Senate District 27.
Drake’s application to run for that seat was rejected and he did not run.
Monitor staff writer Mark Reagan contributed to this report.
