A second former top tier West Valley Water District official acknowledged last year that he was caught up in a bribery scheme involving entanglements that connected the district to a growing list of one-time Baldwin Park city officials, several of whom have now been indicted on political corruption charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office disclosed last week.
Since 2022, the way in which the hiring and contracting policy at the West Valley Water District in Rialto had been manipulated as part of a quid-pro-quo arrangement to essentially pay off former Baldwin Park Councilman Richard Pacheco has been known. What has now been learned is that Robert Tafoya, who was Baldwin Park city attorney while he was simultaneously serving as the water district’s general counsel, was in on the graft. Based upon both previously and recently available information, it appears that at least one of the district’s former board members and a local state senator also took part in receiving, in one form or another substantial amounts of graft money – political grease – put up by the owner of a business that succeeded in obtaining a permit to sell marijuana in the Los Angeles County city.
Central to the circumstance is Mike Taylor, who was once seen as a pillar of both the Los Angeles County/Baldwin Park and Los Angeles County/Rialto communities.
Taylor as a young man went to work with the Baldwin Park Police Department in the 1981. Baldwin Park is a 6.9-square mile city in which the population now stands at 72,176. Over Taylor’s first three decades with the police department, he slowly but steadily promoted through the ranks, educating himself to include certificates in specialized law enforcement disciplines extending to completing courses at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia and bachelor of arts and master’s degrees in political science and then a doctorate in education in public administration. In 2014, Taylor reached the top, or very nearly the top, of his profession when he was promoted to Baldwin Park police chief.
Among the members of the city council at the time Taylor was police chief were Ricardo Pacheco, Susan Rubio and Monica Garcia.
Taylor was a resident in the most upscale neighborhood in Rialto, where he had made the acquaintance and then developed a friendship with Dr. Clifford Young, a former San Bernardino County supervisor who beginning in 2013 had been a member of the West Valley Water District Board of Directors. Taylor had run, unsuccessfully, for a position on the board in 2015.

In 2016, Taylor was ignominiously fired on grounds which remain shrouded in mystery, owing to the strictures of confidentiality that attend public employee records in California. That same year, California’s voters passed Proposition 64, which legalized recreational use of marijuana in the Golden State. The Proposition gave cities the option of continuing to prohibit cannabis businesses within their confines or, alternately, permitting and licensing them. Baldwin Park opted to ban retail delivery of the intoxicant but permitted cultivation, wholesale distribution and retailing of the plant or its derivatives in retail establishments. Of Los Angeles County’s 88 cities, Baldwin Park was one of 27 that permitted commercial cannabis activity of some sort, while the other 66 banned it outright. As such, competition for the limited permits to open a potentially lucrative marijuana/cannabis-related business was keen.

In 2017, as the city was making preparations to adopt to the new law and allow legalized marijuana profiteering to take place and reap the reward of permitting/licensing fees and tax revenue that would come with it, Taylor was settling into what seemed a comfortable retirement. That year, Clifford Young was due to seek reelection to the West Valley Water District Board. Taylor joined him as a candidate for the board, and they ran as a slate. Unwilling to accept defeat in the race as he had in 2015, Taylor cast about for a way he could finance a campaign that would ensure his victory. He cut a deal with then-Baldwin Park Councilman Ricardo Pacheco and then-Baldwin Park City Attorney Ricardo Pacheco.
Pacheco had at that point entered into a corrupt bargain with at least two would-be commercial marijuana entrepreneurs, promising, in exchange for bribes, to obtain for them permits to operate their businesses in the city some 35 miles west of Rialto along the 10 Freeway. Tafoya, to advance that scheme, authored an ordinance passed by the city council at Pacheco’s encouragement and with his support that in essence conferred monopolies or near monopolies on three companies dealing in marijuana or cannabis products operating within Baldwin Park. In return for Tafoya authoring “hit pieces,” i.e., negative campaign mailers targeting Young’s and Taylor’s political opponents in the 2017 West Valley Water District race and Pacheco hitting up the marijuana entrepreneurs who were paying him off for money to finance Taylor’s campaign, Taylor agreed to arrange for Tafoya to be hired as the West Valley Water District’s general legal counsel once he was on the board and to find an equally lucrative position for Pacheco as an administrator/manager with the district. Thrown into the bargain was that Pacheco and Tafoya working together would see to it that Taylor was brought back to serve as Baldwin Park police chief.
According to the FBI, Pacheco steered additional money from the marijuana entrepreneurs who were lining his pockets in exchange for approval of their operations in Baldwin Park into Taylor’s water board campaign coffers that helped to fund Taylor’s campaign in the November 2017 election for a position on the West Valley Water District Board of Directors and, to a lesser extent, Young’s reelection campaign. Particularly helpful in that regard was Sharone Barshatski, the principal in a marijuana-related company that ultimately obtained an operating permit in Baldwin Park. Barshatski provided Taylor with $10,000 for his campaign. Furthermore, Pacheco used money that had been provided to him by the cannabis-related business interests and “laundered” through a political action committee he controlled, the California Education Coalition, known as CEC for short, to make a $7,000 donation to Taylor’s campaign on September 26, 2017.
Young was reelected and Taylor was elected in the November 2017 race, and their ally, Kyle Crowther, was successful as well in a specially-held election to select a replacement to serve the final two years on the term of Alan Dyer, who had defeated Taylor in the 2015 election but who had resigned in July 2016, a little more than eight months into what was supposed to be his four-year tenure.
Less than two weeks after Taylor had won that election, Pacheco supported the rehiring of Taylor as Baldwin Park police chief, and Tafoya wrote up the contract that spelled out the terms of Taylor’s rehiring. Under those terms, Taylor was to be paid a salary of $234,000 per year, which was $21,800 more than the $213,200 he was previously making as police chief. The contract set a very high bar for terminating him as police chief, requiring that the city council cite cause for doing so and that the only cause it could use was Taylor’s conviction of a felony. The contract gave the council the right to suspend him or place him on administrative leave, but only if he were to be provided with his full pay and benefits. The duration of the contract was specified as one-year, with renewal or rollover clauses. If the council elected to not renew the contract, Taylor was to be provided with a three-month severance payment.
Taylor, upon being sworn into office as a member of the West Valley Water District Board on December 7, 2017, at that meeting persuaded his board colleagues to hire Tafoya as the water district’s general counsel.
Taylor successfully lobbied his board colleagues to hire Pacheco as the water district’s assistant general manager in March 2018. Pacheco did not have the technical expertise to fill that position, which paid the city councilman just shy of a quarter of a million dollars a year in total compensation. Thereupon, at Tafoya’s suggestion, Taylor abstained from the vote ratifying Pacheco’s employment contract.
Even before 2017 had ended, Pacheco’s activity and interaction with elements of the nascent marijuana industry had registered on the FBI’s radar screen, resulting in him falling under intense scrutiny even as he was accepting at least $280,000 in under-the-table payments from various principals in marijuana-related enterprises that were seeking permits to transact business in Baldwin Park. Despite their best efforts, federal agents were unable to catch Pacheco red-handed taking money from those who were bribing him. The FBI devised a strategy whereby they employed two Baldwin Park police officers to dialogue with Pacheco over the city’s ongoing employment contract negotiations with the Baldwin Park Police Association. Ultimately, in exchange for Pacheco’s promise to vote in favor of the contract that had been worked out between the police officers’ bargaining unit and the city, which Pacheco made good on during a city council meeting in March 2018, the officers paid or made arrangements to convey $37,900 in bribes to the councilman from January through October 2018. That money included $17,900, which was distributed through checks made out to Pacheco’s church and to what the U.S. Attorney’s Office referred to as “sham political committees” under the names of other people but controlled by Pacheco, as well as an envelope with $20,000 in cash that one of the officers slipped to Pacheco at a Baldwin Park coffee shop.
Rather than immediately acting upon having established that Pacheco was accepting bribes, the FBI continued to observe his interactions with a host of others, monitoring his communications and scrutinizing his official actions.
In December 2018, the FBI without fanfare served a search warrant at Pacheco’s home, during the course of which agents confronted him with some of the evidence that had been accumulated against him. During that search, the FBI found, or was led to by Pacheco, $83,145 in cash, including $62,900 the councilman had had buried in his backyard in two locations. Thereafter, Pacheco cooperated with the FBI, regularly turning over to federal agents and the U.S. Attorney’s office his cell phones and computers, or otherwise allowing them to monitor his phone calls, text messages and emails.
While it is now well documented that Pacheco was forthcoming in providing federal authorities with access to the standard devices he routinely used and the information they contained, the Sentinel  has independently learned that he, Tafoya and Taylor had been and were continuing to communicate by means of a series of inexpensive and prepaid cell phones, commonly referred to as “burner phones,” they would discard after a few months of use. It is not clear whether Pacheco disclosed to the FBI that he was using such devices or the information contained thereon.
Relatively soon after Pacheco had been hired into the assistant general manager’s position at the West Valley Water District, it was recognized generally throughout that organization that he had no qualifications for the post and that he had been provided with the job as a sinecure, what was an essentially do-nothing and highly lucrative position, as a political favor. From the time of his hiring at the end of March 2018 until March of 2019, Pacheco made sporadic appearances at West Valley Water District headquarters. As of April 2019, he was a complete no-show at the district offices. In May 2019, it was announced that Pacheco was on paid administrative leave, though he continued to draw his full pay until November 2019, a total of more than $135,000 over the nearly eight months he was in total absentia from the district. In November 2019, Pacheco’s employment with the district was terminated, at which point he was provided with a $146,459.82 severance equal to nine months’ salary. In this way, Pacheco was paid more than $525,000 for doing nothing.
Throughout 2019, the ongoing FBI investigation into the corruption at Baldwin Park City Hall was spreading across the landscape of Southern California from Los Angeles County and into San Bernardino County, primarily because of the connection to the West Valley Water District involving Pacheco, Tafoya and Taylor.
The FBI was extremely discrete in serving the search warrants on and conducting its raids regarding Pacheco, his home, vehicle and office. In this way, both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office managed to encircle the Baldwin Park councilman and slowly over time reduce the circumference of the investigative parameters around him, squeezing him into a compliant attitude of cooperation with the ongoing investigation into just who was involved in corrupting the wheels of government, holding out the possibility of leniency, or relative leniency, if he was able to implicate others and allow the FBI to document that activity. The initial FBI focus on Pacheco within the context of Baldwin Park’s permitting of marijuana-related businesses expanded to include the companies involved paying off politicians elsewhere, such as in Compton, and it followed Pacheco’s, Tafoya’s and Taylor’s trails to the headquarters of the West Valley Water District at 855 West Base Line Road in Rialto. The FBI scrutinized the situation to see if Pacheco’s colleagues on the Baldwin Park City Council were receiving money as well or whether they had merely been beguiled by Pacheco and the business applicants into thinking that allowing such operations to set up in Baldwin Park would provide the cash-strapped municipality with much needed revenue in terms of permitting fees and taxes on the product to be grown or sold.
The FBI was heavily focused on Tafoya’s degree of involvement, as he was setting up the ground rules by which applicants for permits would compete for what in the end would be a limited number of marijuana cultivation and retail opportunities in Baldwin Park, and Taylor, who as police chief would have at least some say in the police department’s enforcement of the city’s rules, ordinances and regulations. This stance on Taylor’s part contrasted sharply with his comportment earlier in his career and even as late as his first tenure as police chief, when he and others in the department dealt straightforwardly and at times quite harshly with marijuana law offenders. The FBI’s suspicion fell on Tafoya because of the manner in which his drafting of the ordinances conferred out-and-out monopolies or overwhelming advantages on those entities bribing Pacheco. Taylor’s involvement in the processes was more subtle and indirect. Complicating the FBI’s effort to capture a clear picture of the plotting that was ongoing among “the big three,” as Pacheco, Tafoya and Taylor came to be known, was their use of the burner phones.
Almost immediately after the raid at his home had taken place, Pacheco informed Tafoya and Taylor of what had occurred. Tafoya and Taylor, circumspectly, advised Pacheco on what he should say to the agents and how he should say it. The burner phones, which provided the three with a means of communicating that was not compromised in the way that Pacheco’s use of his other phone and computers were, facilitated this. Simultaneously, Pacheco had quietly agreed to cooperate with the FBI, assistance which included allowing agents to set up points of vantage with regard to a whole host of interactions he was having, while he was yet a councilman and mayor pro tem in Baldwin Park, with businessman, other politicians, political operatives and community leaders.
In March 2020, the U.S. Attorney’s Office under seal filed criminal charges against Pacheco, at which point the councilman simultaneously entered a plea to those charges. The case and plea arrangement were kept secret to allow the FBI’s investigation of public corruption to continue, and the councilman’s participation as a confidential informant was extended. In June 2020, Pacheco, in keeping with the terms of the plea arrangement, resigned from the council. To protect the yet ongoing investigation, no disclosure of the plea arrangement was made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Pacheco publicly stated that he had resigned so he could spend more time with his family and pursue other professional endeavors.
For anyone paying attention, on October 28, 2020 it became clear that there was something amiss, as on that day the FBI served search warrants at the home of Compton City Councilman Isaac Galvan, the downtown Los Angeles law office of Robert Tafoya and the Upland home of San Bernardino County Planning Commissioner Gabe Chavez.
An analysis of the search warrants and the entire circumstance led those whose premises had been searched to the inescapable conclusion that Pacheco was an FBI informant. Then, three months later, that reality was spelled out in explicit terms when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in January 2021 publicly announced Pacheco’s June 2020 guilty plea and the details relating to his acceptance of bribes from the officers with the police union, revealing the charges against him and partially unsealing the plea agreement by which Pacheco had agreed to fully cooperate in ongoing public corruption investigations. The redactions in the document were intended, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, “to protect the integrity of ongoing aspects of those investigations.”
Taylor, who left as Baldwin Park police chief in late 2018, in November 2020 made an unsuccessful run for a position on the Rialto City Council. Following the 2019 election, the West Valley Water District transitioned from board election in odd-number years to even number years, extending all of the incumbents’ terms by one year.
By late 2021, those who had been involved to whatever extent in the water district’s December 2017 hiring of Tafoya and the district’s March 2018 hiring of Pacheco were becoming highly excitable and visibly nervous. In December 2021, West Valley Water District Board Member Kyle Crowther, who had been closely aligned with Taylor, having been provided with an out-of-state job offer, resigned as a board member to accept the job. Early the next month, Clifford Young, in the aftermath of his wife’s death and facing a health challenge of his own, resigned. In late May 2022, Taylor, concerned with the extent of the yet-ongoing federal investigation into matters touching on both Baldwin Park and the West Valley Water District, tendered his resignation. In July 2022, he moved to Arkansas. In August 2022, Clifford Young died.
In October 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced charges and a plea agreement pertaining to Chavez’s use of his Claremont-based internet marketing company, Market Share Media Agency, to launder $170,000 in payoffs to Pacheco that had originated with two companies that had received marijuana-related commercial operating permits in Baldwin Park.
In conjunction with that announcement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office unsealed a set of documents, including Pacheco’s plea agreement which detailed Pacheco’s interactions with the commercial marijuana companies that obtained permits to operate in Baldwin Park as well as with Tafoya and Taylor, among others. Pacheco’s plea agreement was augmented with an exhibit, the “Factual Basis” provided to the court to support Pacheco’s guilty plea. Revealed in that document was how Tafoya behind the scenes instructed Pacheco, Taylor and Chavez to comport themselves in carrying out the activity they were engaging in, including the methodology by which the cannabis companies hid and laundered the kickbacks Pacheco was receiving for approving those applicants’ operating permits in Baldwin Park. In those documents, it is revealed that Pacheco, through intermediaries and “consulting” contracts extracted money what were identified as “Marijuana Companies 3 and 4, both of whom were seeking city marijuana cultivation and manufacturing development agreements.”
Those companies were charged, according to the documents, “$150,000 each in consulting fees.”
On December 5, 2024, the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles announced that exactly a year earlier, “Robert Manuel Nacionales Tafoya, 62, of Redondo Beach, who served as Baldwin Park’s city attorney from December 2013 to October 2022, pleaded guilty on December 5, 2023, to federal bribery and tax evasion charges.” Simultaneously, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that Edgar Cisneros, who had been the City of Commerce’s city manager from November 2017 to December 2023, pleaded guilty on November 6, 2023, to federal bribery charges.
In making the announcements, the U.S. Attorney’s Office unsealed the criminal charges and plea agreements, in which both Cisneros and Tafoya agreed to cooperate in ongoing public corruption investigations.
According to the plea agreements, shortly after Baldwin Park began issuing marijuana permits in June 2017, Pacheco solicited bribes from companies seeking those permits. Cisneros helped a company obtain a marijuana permit and related approvals through approximately $45,000 in bribes and that the company promised to pay Cisneros at least $235,000 to help secure the permit. Tafoya facilitated a bribery scheme involving former Compton City Councilman Isaac Galvan, in which Galvan, working as a consultant to Yichang Bai, sought to obtain a marijuana permit with the City of Baldwin Park, for a company owned by Bai, W&F International Corp., by providing bribes to Pacheco.
In his plea agreement, Tafoya made statements that seemed to implicate current State Senator Susan Rubio, who in 2017 and 2018 was on the Baldwin Park City Council, in taking a $13,400 bribe.
Rubio’s Senate District 22 lies predominantly in Los Angles County but extends into western San Bernardino County, specifically the cities of Chino, Monclair, Ontario and some unincorporated county territory between and around them.
Under the subheading “Bribery Scheme Involving Person 20,” Tafoya relates his interaction with an unnamed individual corresponding to Rubio in all particulars and who, through the process of elimination, could be no one else. The document does not name Rubio, but refers to “Person 20.”
Tafoya relates, “In or around 2017 or 2018, Person 20, a public official, approached defendant [Tafoya] and asked him to solicit a bribe payment from a company seeking a marijuana permit in the city [Baldwin Park] using the same intermediary scheme utilized by Pacheco. Defendant selected Person 19 to be the intermediary and ‘consultant’ for Person 20, and Person 19 agreed to partake in the scheme with Person 20. Defendant then approached Person 21, a consultant, and explained that, for Person 21 to obtain a marijuana permit for her client, Person 21 would need to hire Person 19 as a ‘consultant’ for the client seeking the marijuana permit and pay Person 19 $240,000.”
The identities of Person 19 and Person 20 are not clear.
Tafoya’s plea agreement continues, “After negotiating further, Person 21 and the client, a company Person 21 represented, agreed to the contract. Defendant then drew up a contract for $240,000 and listed Person 19 as a ‘consultant.’ Person 20 wanted to receive $200,000 from the contract and Person 19 to receive the remaining $40,000. Person 21 and her client began reconsidering entering the deal and told defendant they did not want to enter the deal. Person 20 and defendant then met with Person 21 and told Person 21 that for her client to get their marijuana permit, Person 21 and her client would have to pay Person 19. Person 21 responded that they would pay the ‘consulting’ contract for Person 19 but not for $240,000. Person 21 and her client ultimately signed a contract with Person 19. Defendant later became concerned that Person 21 and/or her client might report the scheme to law enforcement, since they were so resistant to agreeing to the deal in the first instance. Defendant then drafted a notice for Person 19 to notify Person 21 and her client that Person 19 would be canceling his ‘consulting’ contract with them. Defendant then told Person 20 that defendant would not provide him/her the money from contract.”
Thus, it appears that the conveyance of the $340,000 bribe to Person 20 fell through. Nevertheless, under the subheading “Funneling $30,000 in Cash to Person 20’s Campaign,” Tafoya indicates $30,000 did get delivered to an individual who situationally matches up with Rubio.
“Starting in 2017 and ending in November 2018, Person 20 was running for State elected office,” Tafoya’s plea agreement states. “To raise campaign funds, Person 20 asked defendant on two occasions to provide him/her $15,000 in cash that Person 20 could then funnel to other individuals to make “conduit contributions to his/her campaign. Person 20 wanted these small donations to demonstrate to other donors his/her broad support amongst the community. Defendant agreed on both occasions to provide
the cash because he believed Person 20 could remove defendant as city attorney and understood that Person 20 would provide defendant additional work if he/she were elected to State office. In or around October 2017, while in the primary for his/her election, Person 20 first asked defendant for $15,000 in cash. Defendant agreed to provide it and then withdrew $15,000 from the Tafoya & Garcia, LLP account at Wells Fargo in four transactions between October 25, 2017 and October 26, 2017. Defendant then met with Person 20 and provided him/her the $15,000 in cash in an envelope. After Person 20 won his/her primary in June 2018, Person 20 once more solicited $15,000 in cash from defendant in order to further engage in the conduit contribution scheme described above. Defendant agreed but, before providing the money, wanted assurances from Person 20 that he/she would take care of defendant, protect his job as the city attorney, and assist defendant financially or professionally in his/her official capacity if he/she obtained State elected office. Person 20 agreed, and defendant withdrew $15,000 in cash, which he provided to Person 20.”
The only individual who meets all of the criteria Tafoya attributes to Person 20 – a personage with the authority to terminate the Baldwin Park city attorney in 2017 and 2018 who was was running for state office in both the June 2018 Primary Election and the November 2018 General Election – is Rubio. Only the Baldwin Park mayor and/or a member of the Baldwin Park City Council could vote to terminate the city attorney. And while another member of the Baldwin Park City Council, Monica Garcia, also ran for the State Senate in the June 2018 Primary, she finished third in that race and did not compete in the November 2018 General Election.
Rubio’s campaign finance records are consistent with Tafoya’s description of Person 20’s request that the money provided to her campaign be provided in smaller increments from the straw donors the attorney described. Those records show
Campaign finance reports provided by the California Depart of State’s office show two contributions totaling $4,000 from Tafoya & Garcia, LLP – Tafoya’s law firm – in 2017 and $2,600 from Tafoya & Garcia, LLP to her in 2018. If Tafoya’s statement in his plea agreement is accurate, it thus appears that Rubio pocketed $13,400 – the difference between the$30,000 in cash Tafoya provided her and the $6,600 that made its way into her political war chest.
The Sentinel’s efforts to obtain from Rubio her version of events by press time were unsuccessful.