Ex-official accused of faking credentials strikes deal
Charles Trujillo, a former superintendent of Mora Independent Schools who is accused of faking his credentials to secure the $100,000-a-year job, has reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to one felony count of fraud, District Attorney Richard Flores of Las Vegas, N.M., said in a news release issued Friday.
If Trujillo, 45, accepts the deal in the Mora County case, he will face five years of supervised probation and forfeit more than $34,000 worth of time credits and monetary contributions to the Educational Retirement Board for the periods when he was employed in administrative positions at the Mora and Pecos school districts, the news release said.
He worked as an assistant superintendent at Pecos before stepping into the top job at Mora.
Trujillo’s defense attorney, Sam Bregman of Albuquerque, could not be reached for comment on the plea deal.
Flores, in the news release, said the District Attorney’s Office could not comment on the case because the deal has not been finalized.
In three separate criminal cases filed in both Mora and San Miguel counties in 2016, Trujillo faced a total of 19 counts of fraud, forgery and falsifying documents. The two San Miguel County cases later were combined.
The Las Vegas Optic newspaper in Las Vegas, N.M., first raised questions about Trujillo’s administrative credentials in October 2015, following a monthslong investigation.
The newspaper reported that in 2013, when Trujillo served as chief of the Professional Licensure Bureau of the state Public Education Department, he obtained the license needed to work as a superintendent.
Under a public records request, the newspaper received hundreds of pages of documents on Trujillo that showed numerous discrepancies in his work and educational history. For instance, a New Mexico Highlands University transcript he submitted to the state education department said he had earned a master’s degree there, while the registrar’s office at the school said he had never received such a degree; letters from Highlands officials said he held an administrative position there for seven years, while a human resources director said he held the position only two years.
The documents also show discrepancies in the dates when he worked as an adjunct professor at Luna Community College.
Trujillo obtained four educational licenses while working in the education department’s licensing bureau, the Optic found.
The newspaper’s investigation led the state agency, Highlands and Luna to begin their own inquiries.
Several months after the newspaper published its report, Trujillo resigned from the superintendent’s job. He eventually surrendered his educational licenses to the state.