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McALLEN — Two Edcouch officials accused in a public corruption pay-to-play scheme made their first appearances in federal court here on Friday.
Edcouch City Manager Victor Hugo de la Cruz, 60, and Edcouch Place 1 Alderman Rene Adan Flores, 40, are facing four felony counts, including one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of federal programs bribery, and two counts of Travel Act violations.
Federal agents arrested the pair at their Weslaco homes Thursday, court records show. They made their initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker Friday morning.
The two public officials are accused of plotting a kickback scheme during which they would steer the city of Edcouch into awarding a marketing contract to a Brownsville business in exchange for bribes.
The business owner allegedly received a total of $6,000 in payments from the city between July and September 2019 for the marketing work. In exchange, he allegedly paid a total of $2,000 in bribes to Alderman Flores.
Speaking after Friday’s court hearing, de la Cruz confirmed that the case involves Brownsville marketing agency, Pink Ape Media, which is owned and operated by a Mexican national named Rodrigo Moreno-Fernandez.
“They did a subpoena of the city for Pink Ape documents,” de la Cruz said, referring to federal agents who recently served Edcouch with a subpoena for records.
On Sept. 3, a federal grand jury handed up a four-count indictment against de la Cruz and Flores.
The indictment outlines in detail how the scheme allegedly took place.
It all began in the summer of 2019, when the two officials allegedly met with Moreno-Fernandez, identified simply as “Person 1,” to discuss how they could get the city to pay for his company’s services.
In the indictment, Pink Ape Marketing is referred to as “Business A.”
“DE LA CRUZ and FLORES agreed with Person 1 that Edcouch would pay Business A for marketing work Business A would perform for Edcouch, and, in exchange, Person 1 would pay kickbacks to FLORES,” the indictment reads, in part.
“Under this agreement, Edcouch made two payments to Business A. In return, Person 1 paid two kickbacks to FLORES,” it further reads.
The three men allegedly met on June 9, 2019 to discuss the city awarding a contract to Pink Ape. Just two days after that meeting, the city of Edcouch wrote a $3,000 check to the marketing company.
Four days after that, on June 15, 2019, de la Cruz allegedly called Moreno-Fernandez to remind him that “FLORES was expecting his payment.”
About a week later, in another meeting between the trio, the marketing consultant allegedly paid Flores, the alderman, $1,000.
The tit-for-tat allegedly continued two months later, when Edcouch issued another $3,000 check to Pink Ape on Sept. 12, 2019.
Afterward, the trio got together again. In that Sept. 24, 2019 meeting, Moreno-Fernandez allegedly paid Flores another $1,000.
This is not the first time Moreno-Fernandez has been an integral part of a public corruption probe.
In late 2020, Moreno-Fernandez served as the key witness in the federal public corruption trial of Sylvia Atkinson, former Brownsville ISD school board trustee, and former assistant superintendent at Rio Hondo ISD.
Unbeknownst to Atkinson, Moreno-Fernandez has been working as a “cooperating individual” for the FBI.
Over the course of 2018 and 2019, Moreno-Fernandez — along with an undercover FBI agent posing as a filmmaker from India — gathered evidence that Atkinson, who then served as the school board’s vice president, was willing to engage in a similar pay-to-play scheme.
“The CI (cooperating individual) had been working for the FBI for several years and operated a legitimate media consulting firm in Brownsville,” federal prosecutors stated in a February 2022 appellate brief filed in the Atkinson case.
During its investigation, the FBI recorded Atkinson accepting thousands of dollars in bribes from the undercover agent in exchange for placing items on the school board agenda and steering the board members into voting for them.
Moreno-Fernandez had extensive experience in Rio Grande Valley politics prior to the BISD kickback scheme with Atkinson.
And he had known the school board trustee prior to the scheme, as well, having worked on her election campaign, court records show.
Atkinson had also personally invested in Moreno-Fernandez’s independent film, “The Whole.”
A jury ultimately convicted Atkinson of all eight counts against her. Atkinson appealed her conviction and 6.5-year prison sentence, which was later upheld by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Federal prison records show she is currently being held at a halfway house in San Antonio.
But just months after the scheme between Atkinson and Moreno-Fernandez allegedly concluded in February 2019, the marketing consultant was sitting down for meetings with Edcouch officials.
That scheme, in the heart of the Delta, allegedly began sometime in June of that year.
As for what will happen now, de la Cruz, the Edcouch city manager, said he’s not sure.
When asked what the criminal charges mean for his employment with the city, he replied, “I don’t know.”
But the city manager insisted he will not resign.
“I don’t think I should,” de la Cruz said when asked why not.
De la Cruz and Flores are scheduled to be in court again next Wednesday for an arraignment and bond hearing.
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