Down goes another domino in a crooked scheme that shook the city of Weslaco to its core. Gerardo Tafolla, a once-trusted former city commissioner, will now call prison home for the next 30 months after being sentenced for his involvement in a bribery conspiracy that traded city contracts for cold, hard cash in a drama worth tens of millions of dollars. This saga of corruption, as reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office, saw Tafolla and his co-conspirators caught in a web of greed and deceit, to the detriment of the city's morale and pocketbook.
It was a lucrative hustle while it lasted—with Tafolla and another former city commissioner, the compromised John F. Cuellar, accepting bribes from a cast of unsavory characters, all to green-light certain engineering companies for major city contracts. The ill-gotten gains began flowing in March 2008, continuing unabated until December 2015, when one accomplice in this deception netted himself an eye-popping $4.1 million from a pair of engineering firms, as per court documents. Then, dressed up as legal expenses, a hefty $405,000 in bribes were funneled to John Cuellar through a company controlled by his cousin, former Hidalgo County commissioner Arturo Cuellar.
For Arturo Cuellar and Ricardo Quintanilla, the piper too has called, with jury convictions that brought the hammer down on their roles in the scheme, with sentences of 20 and over 16 years, respectively. In this tango of treachery, Tafolla danced to the tune of approximately $85,000, money he received as bribes, enabling companies to profit from Weslaco's waterworks. Evidence presented at trial painted a scandalous picture of public service turned self-service, with Tafolla and John Cuellar using their positions to push through contracts totaling about $38.5 million, intended to refresh the city's water treatment facilities.
The law finally caught up with Tafolla, whose guilty plea to federal program bribery came in April 2019, followed by John Cuellar's contrite plea in August of the same year, admitting to his sins and accepting a three-year stay behind bars. Orchestrating the downfall of these misbegotten officials were the shroud-eyed operatives from the FBI San Antonio Field Office and the IRS-CI Houston Field Office, whose investigations brought light to dark dealings. Assistant U.S. Attorney Roberto Lopez Jr. led the charge in prosecution, backed by a squadron of justice-seekers from the Justice Department's Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section.
