A California Politician Buried Bribe Money In His Backyard. Justice Finally Caught Up.
Ricardo Pacheco served on the Baldwin Park City Council in Southern California from 1997 until his resignation in 2020, and for a meaningful stretch of those years he was using his elected office as a private income stream. Federal prosecutors established that Pacheco accepted tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from multiple sources, including a $20,000 cash payment delivered to him in an envelope at a local coffee shop by a Baldwin Park police officer who was working at the direction of the FBI as part of an ongoing corruption investigation. In exchange for that payment and others, Pacheco voted in favor of the police association's contract with the city. He also solicited and accepted $70,000 in bribes from a cannabis business operator named Isaac Jacob Galvan, a Compton City Councilman who wanted Pacheco's votes and official support for commercial marijuana cultivation permits in Baldwin Park. Pacheco took the money and cast the votes. He also, at some point, took a portion of what he had collected and buried it in two separate locations in his own backyard. When the FBI investigated and recovered the funds, $62,900 came out of the ground.
On August 25, 2026, United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II sentenced Pacheco, now 63, to 18 months in federal prison, fined him $10,000, and ordered him to forfeit $219,755, in addition to the $83,145 in cash proceeds the FBI had already seized, which included the backyard money. A restitution hearing is scheduled for the coming weeks. Galvan was sentenced on the same day to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $323,557 in restitution, having pleaded guilty in December 2025 to one count of federal program bribery and one count of tax evasion after admitting to the FBI that he had also failed to report more than half a million dollars in income. The investigation was triggered in part when officers who had been approached to participate in the corruption scheme instead went to the FBI and agreed to assist in building the case. The system they trusted worked. Pacheco resigned from office six years ago when his plea was entered. The sentencing this week means the full weight of what he did to the people of Baldwin Park is now on the record, measured in forfeitures, prison time, and a coffee shop envelope that turned out to be the beginning of the end.
