Whipped Cream Difficulties

(Hattip to Mike the Musicologist for sending me the image.)

Previously on Battleswarm: Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti’s Offices Raided by FBI, IRS.

And now, the senses shattering Part II:

Texas State senator Carlos Uresti, a Democrat from San Antonio, was indicted today. He’s facing a total of 13 charges, including “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of securities fraud”.

Interestingly, there’s actually two separate indictments that cover two separate “incidents”. The first one is being called the “Four Winds indictment”. Four Winds was a company that supposedly provided “frac sand”.

Documents filed months ago that outline the investigation claim that company officials in 2014 wired money from the company to personal bank accounts controlled by conspirators or their spouses; sent altered bank statements for the Four Winds’ general operating account to potential investors; and emailed an investor a spreadsheet that falsely showed the investor’s investment was used to buy fracking sands.

The main claim seems to be that Four Winds was just a giant Ponzi scheme. Uresti was the company’s general counsel. He’s charged with:

One count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, five substantive counts of wire fraud, two counts of securities fraud, one count of engaging in monetary transactions with property derived from specified unlawful activity, and one count of being an unregistered securities broker.

Also charged were Stan Bates, the CEO, and Gary L. Cain, a consultant for the company. According to the Statesman‘s report, the Four Winds investigation has already resulted in three guilty pleas by officers of the company.

Indictment number two is the “Reeves County indictment”. In this one, Uresti and a guy named “Vernon C. Farthing III” conspired to “pay and accept bribes” so that Farthing III’s company would get a contract for medical services for the Reeves County Correctional Center.

The indictment specifically alleges that Farthing paid Uresti $10,000 a month as a marketing consultant and that half of that sum was then given to a Reeves County official for his support and vote to award the contract to Farthing’s company, federal officials said.

Uresti and Farthing III are both charged with “one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering”.

Quoth the Statesman one more time (and this article is by Katie Hall, who I generally consider to be a pretty solid reporter on the crime beat):

Uresti would face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of being an unregistered securities broker. Additionally, each man could face up to 20 years in prison for each fraud charge and up to 10 years in prison for each money laundering charge.

Here is your obligatory link to Ken White on federal sentencing and why it’s misleading to say things like “up to 20 years”. I find it seriously hard to believe that Uresti will get anything close to that: Russell Erxleben only got 84 months (7 years) for his first conviction, and 90 months for his second.

Then again, Erxleben was a UT football player: Uresti was a Marine, but as far as I can tell, did not play football.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2017 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Law, Politics, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.