DONNA, Texas — Two Texas border public school board members have been indicted on bribery and attempted extortion charges. The charges were handed down Friday morning when the U.S District Court for the Southern District of Texas unsealed an indictment charging two of the board members with bribery and extortion in connection with services contracts for the district. A third person who is believed to have acted as a middleman has also been charged.
According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eloy Infante, 53, Elidio Yanez, 45, and Adrian Guerrero, 50, have all been charged with one count of attempted extortion, two counts of federal programs bribery and one count of conspiracy.
According to the indictment, from February 2015 through May 2015, the defendants allegedly solicited and accepted bribes from an individual whose company provided services to the Donna Independent School District. The indictment alleges that the defendants told the man that in order for his company to keep its contract with the DISD, he needed to pay Infante and Yanez $10,000 each and Guerrero served as the middleman for one of the payments. The two board members are believed to have accepted part of the money.
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, the Donna school board has been rife with corruption which includes a series of political power plays aimed at benefiting the faction that supported the current school board members. Since getting elected, the new faction led by Alfred Sandoval fired a law firm that the firm had and replaced them with a criminal defense attorney who is in fact a convicted felon.
In that move the school board went form paying an $80,000 retainer to the law firm to paying $25,000 a month plus $250 for hours worked to Robert J. Salinas who is an attorney even though he spent time in federal prison for money laundering.
Another school board member Tomasa “Tammy” Ramos ended up getting married in Las Vegas during a conference that the school board went to. The conference was not education related but was in fact a speech by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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