Former Sen. Uresti to be sentenced in bribery case.
Ex-state senator faces 5 years for bribery; time served may be concurrent with prior conviction
The nearly two-year saga in the criminal proceedings of state-senator-turned-felon Carlos Uresti reaches its final act today.
Uresti, 55, is set to be sentenced for his guilty plea to conspiring with others to pay and accept bribes to secure a West Texas correctional medical-services contract for a company run by a Lubbock businessman.
The longtime Democratic politician is facing a maximum of five years in prison.
Uresti’s political and legal career unraveled after a federal jury nearly a year ago convicted him on 11 felony charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering for his roles at FourWinds Logistics, an oil field services firm. He served as the company’s outside legal counsel, was a 1 percent owner and recruited investors.
The FourWinds case is unrelated to his guilty plea for bribery.
Uresti subsequently gave up his law license and resigned from the Senate.
As part of his sentence, Uresti also was ordered to pay $6.3 million to victims of the FourWinds fraud. He sold his former law office building at 924 McCullough in December and is selling his Helotes estate.
Henry Cisneros, former mayor and U.S. housing secretary, said he is praying for Uresti to be “strong physically and spiritually through this ordeal.” Cisneros said he and Uresti were “political friends” but did not socialize.
“It’s an American tragedy that a person who served our country as a Marine and who served and touched people’s lives in the Legislature through legislation he passed would find himself in these straits,” Cisneros said. “I feel for him as a human being and hope that the same strength he
has shown other times in his life will carry him through this period in prison.”
Uresti’s legal team will argue that Uresti should serve whatever sentence he receives in the bribery case concurrently with the 12-year prison term he already has received in the FourWinds case, according to one of his lawyers, Mikal Watts.
In October, Uresti pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery rather than stand trial. Prosecutors have said they will recommend that he serve the two sentences simultaneously.
The guilty plea came as a surprise, given Uresti had protested his innocence for almost a yearand-a-half.
Yet the plea made strategic sense because there was little for him to gain by going to trial again. Even if he prevailed, he was still looking at a long prison sentence for the FourWinds conviction. Uresti may have been hoping that accepting responsibility for his criminal conduct would spare him from having the two sentences stacked.
As part of his plea, Uresti agreed to drop his appeal of his conviction and sentence in the FourWinds case.
Watts declined to say anything more about the sentencing hearing. After Uresti entered the guilty plea, Watts called his friend a “good man.”
“He put his family first in deciding to put this all behind him,” Watts said.
Uresti has been free on bond pending sentencing before Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra.
It remains to be seen if Uresti will be taken into custody following today’s proceedings or if he will request additional time to turn himself him.
In the West Texas bribery case, Uresti was indicted along with Lubbock businessman Vernon “Trey” Farthing III in May 2017.
They were accused of conspiring from January 2006 through September 2016 to pay and accept bribes to secure a Reeves County Correctional Center medical-services contract for Farthing’s company.
Farthing was accused of paying Uresti $10,000 a month as a “consultant.” Half of that amount allegedly went to Reeves County Judge Jimmy Galindo for his support and vote to award the contract to Farthing’s company, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said Uresti and Galindo shared about $800,000 in kickbacks.
Galindo, who served as county judge from 1995 to 2006, subsequently pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery and failure to file a tax return. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 26.
Farthing was acquitted by a San Antonio federal jury in November.
Uresti and Galindo “should not second-guess their guilty pleas in this case because Mr. Farthing was acquitted,” Ezra said after reading the jury’s decision. “The evidence, even though they were not on trial, was overwhelming as to their guilt.”