ARE JUDGES AIDING A DISTRICT CLERK PROBE COVER-UP?

By Juan Montoya
A funny thing happened on the way to an investigation.
At their last meeting, the Cameron County Commissioners Court, commissioners got a status report on the investigations into monies that went missing from the Justice of the Peace office formerly held by the late Tony Torres and the recent discovery of theft from the child support collections under District Clerk Aurora De la Garza.
In the case involving employees of the JP's office, it is rumored in the darker hallways of the Oscar Dancy Building that it involves some $80,000 pilfered over the years. There are whispers of trips to Las Vegas, sporty cars and plasma TVs the size of a small billboard.
In the case of the clerk at child support, the totals mentioned range between $8,000 to $10,000 that were stolen when the system used to collect the fees from child support defendants left several gaps in security big enough for a third trimester pregnant woman to waddle though.
The fiscal claims made to surety in the JP case is presenting problems since the county may be liable for the funds to the state. In the case of the child support clerk, she is facing theft charges but even then, it appears that at least one large person of interest – District Clerk Aurora De la Garza – may have found a gap to waddle though herself.
Officially, Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio has said that 32-year-old Melinda Gilman Gonzalez pocketed $7,500 stolen during a five month period – from March until late July – which for her own personal use. She was taking the money, Lucio said, from the court costs collections department, in the office of District Clerk Aurora de la Garza.
The 32-year-old woman is charged with tampering with government records and theft.
“When she realized we had a warrant for her arrest, she resigned from the position and she came to the office and turned herself in," Lucio said.
Gilman was arraigned by Attorney and District Attorney Democratic candidate Luis Saenz.
He said Gilman was allegedly stealing the money when taking manual payments from people who would go pay their court dues, after the electronic system shut down at 4 p.m. Then they would issue hand-written receipts to those paying and keep receipt books without entering the data into the computers.
County administrators and others close to the child support theft case say that since the auditors undertook an inquiry into the missing child support money, that generated several statements in affidavit form that indicated that someone may have directed county employees to make some of the evidence in the case go missing, just as the funds did.
Those statements were – for some unknown reason – not made available to the sheriff department's investigators and were not included in the case status report. Apparently, the district attorney's office did not receive them from the auditor who is under the direct supervision by the district judges.
Why the sheriff department's investigator and the Asst. DAs didn't include them in their case files remains a mystery. Sources who have seen them say that some of the affidavits suggest that there was a concerted effort to direct some employees to conceal pertinent information and documentation.
And, since the auditor's office comes under the supervision of the district judges, some are even speculating that it might be them that may be running interference to limit the liability exposure of Aurorita.
"It doesn't look good that the some of the information that may help the investigation and uncover a potential cover-up by administrators at the District Clerk's office – perhaps Aurora herself – be withheld from the investigators," said a county insider. "The auditors are under the supervision of the district judges. So put two and two together."