Why the county DA would not file charges in PUSD case
The story in today's paper by reporters Caroline An and Nathan McIntire answers the question of why the county would not file fraud charges based on PUSD's insistence that it was ripped off by contractors it paid to do work with Measure Y bond money. There are no charges, simply because the evidence was based on the word of a contractor who later recanted his testimony (as discussed in a previous story, records of the bond expenditures were so spotty that there was little else to go on).
The contractor in question, Jesse Yzaguirre of La Crescenta, intially said he had paid off a district construction officials:
In that interview [with investigator Michael Ammermon] , Yzaguirre said that he paid former PUSD assistant construction coordinator Mark Kingsbury between $500 and $3,500 in hundred-dollar bills for each project Kingsbury awarded him.
Yzaguirre estimated that he paid Kingsbury between $40,000 and $60,000 during the time he worked on district projects, according to Ammermon.
"I said, `You are paying Mark Kingsbury from the money you get from the district?' " Ammermon wrote in his report.
"Jesse said, `Yes, it is the only way I can get work or he won't hire me.' "
One day after that conversation, however, Yzaguirre sent a fax to the district recanting his statements. In the letter, riddled with misspellings, he wrote that a "terrible addiction problem" caused him to invent the story.
"The simple fact is that my delusions of a hire for pay and millions of dollars magically disappearing are only fabricated," he wrote.
Here's hoping PUSD does a better job keeping track of its expenditures this time around with the newly-approved bond measure. At the very least, it is encouraging that they pursued these fraud cases even though the investigation didn't make their past oversight look too good. Still, we would have all appreciated it at the paper if they had just come out and been open with all this information when we initially learned about the investigation- ultimately, we got the story anyway.
Also, as a last note, the PUSD is still trying to get the county DA to reopen the investigation.
UNDER THE DOME
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