Date: Dec. 5, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov LOS ANGELES — Two former top city officials in Commerce and Baldwin Park have pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme involving bribes in exchange for a corrupt Baldwin Park politician’s votes and influence over his city’s cannabis permitting process, the Justice Department announced today. Edgar Pascual Cisneros of Montebello, who served as Commerce’s city manager from November 2017 to December 2023, pleaded guilty on November 6, 2023, to federal bribery. Robert Manuel Nacionales Tafoya 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. Federal prosecutors today 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, then-Baldwin Park City Councilmember Ricardo 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 Councilmember Isaac Galvan, in which Galvan sought to obtain a marijuana permit for his consulting client also through bribes to Pacheco. Tafoya further admitted to evading payment of approximately $650,000 in federal tax liability. Pacheco pleaded guilty in June 2020 to a federal bribery charge unrelated to the marijuana-permit scheme. Pacheco further admitted to orchestrating bribery schemes involving Tafoya and Gabriel Chavez, a former San Bernardino County planning commissioner who pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge in November 2022. Pacheco’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 2025. Chavez’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 2025. In September 2023, Galvan and his consulting client, Yichang Bai, were arrested on a federal grand jury indictment alleging they paid $70,000 in bribes to Pacheco in exchange for his vote and support for marijuana permits for Bai’s company, W&F International Corp. Both men have pleaded not guilty. Their trial is scheduled for June 10, 2025. An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and FBI are investigating these matters. Assistant United States Attorneys Thomas F. Rybarczyk, Michael J. Morse, and Lindsey Greer Dotson of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section are prosecuting these cases. IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
