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Constable Victor Trevino Indicted for Diverting Charity Funds and Failure to Report Campaign Contributions

Posted byHoumanitarian

James Pinkerton, Mike Morris & Brian Rogers,
Houston Chronicle
Longtime Precinct 6 Constable Victor Trevino was indicted Friday, accused of failing to report cash campaign contributions, diverting money from his youth charity for personal use and using deputies to serve eviction notices and then keeping the delivery fees.

Trevino was charged in four felony indictments alleging abuse of official capacity, misapplication of fiduciary property and tampering with a government document. He faces 10 years in prison if convicted, said Harris County District Attorney’s Office prosecutors who investigated the constable for more than a year and interviewed 165 witnesses.

Defense attorney Chip Lewis said Trevino will not step down as he fights charges he described as a hodgepodge of technical violations. “What you see today is a product of what I call old-school law enforcement meets modern-day regulations,” Lewis said. “All of the allegations involve either inadequate bookkeeping, (or) failure to technically satisfy very technical laws.”

Lewis said Trevino – a former Houston police officer who has served as constable for 24 years – did not divert any money for his personal use. Trevino testified before a Harris County grand jury for nearly 10 hours and acknowledged problems with how he reported contributions to his charity and campaign reports, Lewis said.

“He admitted to them he was unaware of certain accounting, bookkeeping, technical laws that went along with establishing a charity,” Lewis said. “Let’s be honest. Constable Trevino is a self-made man, a career law enforcement officer who with the best of intentions that anybody could have created a charity for his community.”

Two of the charges were for tampering with a governmental record, related to Trevino failing to report cash contributions of more than $50 in campaign finance reports he was required to file in January 2011 and a second report from January to June 2011.

He was charged with misapplication of fiduciary property from 2008 to 2011 relating to money collected by his nonprofit Constable’s Athletic Recreational and Education Events Inc. No specific amounts were alleged in the charges. Trevino has said the money for his nonprofit – which totaled nearly $100,000 one year – was spent on charity events, such as Christmas parties and boxing tournaments.

(Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle)

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