ustxtxb_obs_1994_10_14_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

PEOPLE Make a world of difference ! We’re proud of our employees and their contributions to your success and ours. Call us for quality printing, binding, mailing and data processing services. Get to know the people at Futura. FUTUM P.O. Box 17427 Austin, TX 78760-7427 389-1500 COMMUNICATIONS, INC companied Carrillo to his office in June 1992. “I shit my pants when you came in with that Anglo lady,” Guevara told Carrillo, explaining that the blond woman made him cool his jets about doing a deal with Carrillo’s organization. The Embassy Suites conversations of Guevara and Munoz, with agent Carrillo and Preciado, bordered on the bizarre, covering topics as broad as Guevara’s tie, women, politics, visits and real estate in Las Vegas, Mufioz’s health, Rolex watches and scams to launder money in Zapata. During that visit, Guevara offered assurances for repeated safe landings at the Zapata County airport. “That’s the airport, what about the cops,?” Carrillo asked Guevara, wondering if he could buy Sheriff Romeo R. Ramirez to guarantee the safety of their operations in Zapata County. Guevara answered at one point that Ramirez’s word “is gold” and added, “His ass is mine.” He detailed that he had given Ramirez $5,000 of his own money for his reelection and that a dealer in Starr County had, at Guevara’s request, coughed up an additional $5,000. Guevara named County Attorney Arturo Figueroa as the real foe in Zapata County. “He is my political enemy,” Guevara said. “The problem with Arturo is that he’s an Arab.” When pressed hard by Carrillo and Preciado to offer the sheriff money for protection, Guevara backed off from his claim that he controlled the sheriff and suggested that perhaps Mufroz could better approach the sheriff. The judge elaborated on his knowledge of flying at attitudes undetectable by radar. “I’ll tell you . exactly where they are and where to cross … I know this area,” he told Carrillo and Preciado. “You call me before. If you fly money in, my officials in the area won’t touch you.” Guevara told agent Carrillo that money could be laundered by Carrillo picking up the six back installments he owed on Six Pack Alley or that he could purchase the Beacon Lodge on the Lakefront and claim that all his Mexican national clients had paid cash. He also offered a scam selling purified water in Zapata. “One of those windmill things,” the judge explained. “A thousand-gallon sale would allow $1,000 to be laundered. You could hook up a tanker and throw away 500 to 1,000 gallons. You could adjust the meter to show more sales,” Guevara elaborated. The judge recounted his ability to fasteject people from jail, as much in neighboring Starr County as in Gwinnett County, Georgia, where he had recently gone to post bail for Anastacio Flores, a Zapatan who had been arrested on a controlled-substance charge. Guevara had used a lot he owned in Zapata as bond for Flores. “I’ve always helped myself out with my people. I’ve helped people take my people out. I have a bonding company,” he explained. Guevara told Carrillo and Preciado of his goal to run for the state Senate seat vacated by Frank Tejeda. According to Guevara, state senators Judith Zaffirini of Laredo and Eddie Lucio of Brownsville and Attorney General Dan Morales knew he was going to run. Guevara bragged that they said, “No, man. We’re with you judge, no problem. We’ll take it from there.” Guevara said, however, that a conversation with Tejeda, who was running for Congress, had made him reconsider running because Tejeda had explained to him the protocol of “waiting your turn.” Guevara dropped the names of some of his purported political connections, including Henry Cisneros, Tamaulipas Governor Manuel Cavazos Lerma and John Longoria, who was then Bexar County Judge. GueL vara commented on Longoria’s staff, “His Guevara commented to Carrillo and Preciado that they could well be setting him up. “Let’s say that we’re talking right now ant that Ramiro was setting me up because, you know, you guys want a feather on your hat that says, ‘We busted a judge.’ ” On the drive to Zapata from San Antonio with Munoz, Guevara reiterated his fear of having fallen into a trap at the meeting with Carrillo and Preciado, telling Mufioz, “All the busts that have been made, they are done in rooms just like that one.” Mufloz testified that Guevara made several references to being set up, asking if there were any cameras or recorders in the room. “He was scared of being busted,” Murloz testified. “He said if he was taken down, there wouldn’t be anyone to help people who trafficked,” Mufioz said, adding that Guevara had said that if he were taken down, when he got out, he would get even. Mufioz offered Guevara $1,000 for taking him to San Antonio for the money. “He refused the money,” Mufioz testified. If he were busted, Guevara speculated on the drive home, there were people who would help him, including, he told Mutioz, a Webb County assistant district attorney, the DA himself and others in Rio Grande City. A few days after the trip, Guevara told Mufioz that he hadn’t been able to sleep, thinking he would be arrested. On instruction from the federal case agents with whom he was working, Mutioz avoided Guevara and had no occasion to see him until March when they ran into each other in the parking lot of a Highway 83 clothing store. Guevara. told Mufioz that he needed to be paid $1,500 for the trip they made to San Antonio in January. That payment, which is documented by Mufioz on the tape, is the basis for count 11, the final extortion charge against Guevara. The Defense Guevara looked grim as he was sworn in as a witness by Judge Kazen on June 24. The young county judge fidgeted with his suit coat, buttoning and unbuttoning it as he stood when the jurors entered the courtroom. Though the defense originally had planned to call over 40 witnesses, including a priest and two nuns, 10 employees of the sheriff’s department, county commissioners, justices of the peace, the county treasurer, the tax assessor-collector, the water plant manager, he former and current superintendents of public schools, bankers, and the judges from three neighboring counties, Guevara was his own sole witness. Questioned by his attorney, Ricardo De Anda, Guevara testified that he had told his brother-in-law, Rivera, from the first contact with Munoz that he wanted nothing to do with a money-laundering scheme, and so opposed was he to such an idea that he contacted Zapata County Sheriff Romeo Ramirez and the county attorney’s investigator Joaquin Solis about Rivera’s approach. “I was being approached not only by my brother-in-law, but also by Ramiro 10 OCTOBER 14, 1994