Former La Joya city manager gets 4 months for theft

McALLEN — Former La Joya city manager Mike Alaniz was sentenced Monday to federal prison for theft of public funds in relation to a piece of property he sold to the city of La Joya in 2017.

Alaniz will serve four months in federal prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release. The judge further ordered Alaniz to pay some $24,000 in restitution to La Joya within the next 30 days.

“In your mind, you may be thinking no one is really getting hurt. … You convince yourself it’s really not that bad. … (but) when it comes from federal funds, we all end up paying,” U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez said to Alaniz as she handed down the sentence against him.

The judge added that — though he was not an elected official — Alaniz nonetheless had a duty to protect the interests of the residents of La Joya during his tenure as the city’s top administrator.

“Public corruption always causes me a lot of concern,” the judge said.

Instead, Alaniz used his position of trust to convince La Joya officials to purchase a piece of property that he owned — a purchase made, in part, with federal funds and at an inflated price.

“(T)he Defendant used his position as the City Administrator of La Joya to effectuate the City of La Joya’s purchase of Lot 112 of Palm Shores Subdivision, a lot owned by the Defendant, for the price of $39,500,” reads an October 2019 charging document known as a “criminal information.”

According to information first reported by The Progress Times, the lot was worth less than half of that at $15,500.

Prosecutors unveiled the charging documents against Alaniz in mid-October 2019. Within days — on Oct. 22, 2019 — he had agreed to plead guilty to the charges.

But when given the opportunity to address the court Monday, Alaniz attributed his commission of the crime to an inattentiveness at his job.

“I’ve had enough time to realize that I should have been more attentive,” Alaniz said.

But the judge pushed back on that idea, saying, “It had nothing to do with not being sufficiently attentive,” especially as a spate of public corruption had engulfed the city and its officials at around the same time as Alaniz’s property sale.

Just last month, the former mayor of La Joya, Jose “Fito” Salinas and his daughter, Frances Salinas De Leon, were themselves sentenced to federal prison for their roles in several schemes that defrauded hundreds of thousands of dollars from the city.

The schemes ensnared the La Joya City Council, its Economic Development Corporation, and the La Joya Housing Authority around 2016 and 2017.

In one scheme, Salinas De Leon defrauded more than $300,000 in federally-funded small business loans from the EDC. In another, she persuaded her father to use his position as mayor to award a lucrative public relations contract with the housing authority to a friend.

And, like Alaniz, the mayor sold La Joya a piece of personal property at an inflated price.

Alaniz was city manager when those schemes were taking place. And as U.S. District Judge Randy Crane said during last month’s sentencing of Fito and Frances Salinas, “He (Alaniz) is on the audio quite extensively… advocating for this.”

Crane was referring to a series of audio recordings of La Joya public meetings during which Alaniz, as city manager, had thrown his support behind the projects that had served as the vehicles for Salinas De Leon’s fraudulent schemes.

Though he was not charged as a coconspirator in any of those crimes, Alaniz was on some level aware of what had been going on — so much so that prosecutors scheduled him to be a witness during the sentencing hearing of the former mayor and his daughter.

He was ultimately not called to the stand, however.

Speaking after Monday’s court hearing, Alaniz’s defense attorney, Rick Salinas, said one of the main reasons his client had not been charged as a coconspirator in those schemes was because of his quick action to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

“That’s what happens when you start talking to these people and you’re trying to work something out,” Rick Salinas said.

But, alluding to the comments from Judge Alvarez, who had questioned why Alaniz had failed to protect the public’s trust, Salinas said Alaniz’s was a problem common among local officials — especially as several large-scale public corruption cases have made their way to criminal courts over the last few years.

“Most people won’t (speak) around here,” Salinas said when asked why Alaniz had not spoken against the schemes he saw Fito Salinas and his daughter putting into motion.

“We’ve gotten used to Uncle Sam always stepping in and wiping our butts, like babies, okay? And that’s part of the problem. … And then when you’re inundated with everybody around you (being corrupt), you don’t want to be a hero because around here the people in this county, I mean, I hate to say it, they just don’t reward that,” he added.

Nevertheless, the defense attorney said he was pleased with Monday’s outcome.

Alaniz had gone into the sentencing hearing facing between 6-12 months in prison. Instead, the judge made a so-called “downward departure” in sentencing Alaniz to four months.

“Irrespective of what the community may think about him, I think at the end of the day he did the right thing. He came forward,” Rick Salinas said.