Mario's Tow Truck Troubles

With a tough election seven weeks away in Bell Gardens, State Senator Gil Cedillo ventured into the working-class city to help out a protégé who could be in deep trouble: Councilman Mario Beltran.

Cedillo stood side-by-side at a press conference with Beltran, a young, trouble-prone politico with a criminal record and called for an end to a widespread police policy of impounding the cars of unlicensed drivers for 30 days. It made good local political theater and armed Beltran to fight for a just cause. Within a matter of days, he persuaded his colleagues on the City Council to end the practice. In Bell Gardens, stuck in the rough-and-tumble belt of heavily immigrant cities that lie southeast of downtown Los Angeles, the high cost of towing penalties often meant the owner lost the car.

But more was on Cedillo's mind that September day than notching up one more city in his statewide crusade to renounce the draconian 30-day impound. The state senator also wanted to help his former field advisor and close friend of his son, Gil Jr., beat a possible rap. Months ago, investigators from various law enforcement agencies began examining whether Beltran helped cut a special deal that gave the tow truck operator, United Motor Club, a five-year monopoly worth millions of dollars in Bell Gardens. District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said Beltran and the tow truck operator are under investigation by the LAPD, the D.A.'s Office and the FBI. Warrants served in June at Beltran's home and office suggest that authorities are looking for possible criminal conflicts of interest related to Beltran's political consulting firm, Americas Consulting Group, and the towing firm.

Cedillo himself underscored the strong message sent that day when Beltran joined him at the press conference to denounce the 30-day impound policy that enriches the city's tow truck operator. Says Cedillo: "He has my full, unwavering support. I think that the fact that he led the charge to rescind the towing ordinance rebuts completely any charge of conflict of interest."

Now that Beltran's problems may not be limited to winning reelection in November, Cedillo makes a point of saying that he will not turn his back on the man he nurtured in the political process. For Cedillo, it simply doesn't matter that Beltran was convicted in March of filing a false police report, after an embarrassing incident in which he woke up drunk in a downtown L.A. prostitute hotel.

But Cedillo's own political fortunes could be intertwined in the outcome of the Beltran matter in ways that raise questions about the powerful role that tow truck companies play in local and statewide politics. Thousands of dollars in contributions to elected officials statewide were made, including some to Cedillo, the vice chair of the state legislature's Latino Caucus, by United Motor Club and a second firm, Maywood Club Towing.

Together, the two companies control contracts worth millions of dollars in four cities: Maywood, Bell Gardens, South Gate, and Cudahy. And since 2000, the two companies and various family members, employees and associates have contributed more than $120,000 to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Assemblyman Kevin DeLeon, Cedillo, and a number of other progressive Democrats, including Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, according to a CityBeat review of campaign finance reports.

To further complicate political peace in Bell Gardens and beyond, the D.A.'s Office last week charged United Motor Club's former point man in Bell Gardens. A three-time felon, accused drug trafficker named Shahram Shayesteh faces charges of obstructing a government official and making a criminal threat during a three-way phone conversation that Beltran set up with his political rival, Bell Gardens Councilman Daniel Crespo. According to LAPD Lieutenant Paul Vernon, police are investigating Beltran's role in Shayesteh's alleged threats to Councilman Crespo, and are sharing the fruits of their investigation with the FBI.

Cedillo, whose presence in the troubled waters of Bell Gardens worries some of his political colleagues, told CityBeat he's not sure if he's met the man behind United Motor Club. "I don't think I've ever spoken to him. I don't think I have any recollection of him, but I don't know."

Yet, through the avenue of political contributions, the towing companies can remain nameless and faceless, yet insinuate themselves into the fabric of the state's political culture every day.

The dark history of Shayestah

Days after the May Day melee in MacArthur Park in which the LAPD roughed up immigrant protestors and members of the media, a number of L.A. officials gathered on a stage in the park to ease tensions in the Latino community. Three of the officials present - although the event did not specifically address driver's license or impound issues - Villaraigosa, Nunez, and DeLeon - received generous campaign donations from Maywood Club Towing.

Maywood Club Towing is a company that is owned by Tooradj Khosroabadi, an Iranian who also is known as "Tony Bravo." He is the brother-in-law of United Motor Club's Shahram Shayesteh, according to Bell Gardens city officials and law enforcement sources.

Last November, less than a month after Shayesteh met with Beltran and his ally on the council, Mayor Jennifer Rodriguez, at an Applebees Restaurant in Bell Gardens, he attended a City Council meeting, represented himself as a "manager and spokesman" for United Motor Club, and walked out with an exclusive five-year franchise agreement to tow cars for the police in Bell Gardens. At the time, he was under indictment in two federal drug trafficking cases, one involving an international opium smuggling ring that allegedly extends from Iran to Germany to Los Angeles. He has since been dismissed from that case, and pleaded guilty of lying to federal investigators in another drug case and is expected to get probation and no time.

United Motor Club told Bell Gardens officials that Shayesteh was merely a contractor who helped them sell unclaimed cars. He has since been fired by the company.

In one of the drug trafficking cases, Tony Bravo liquidated real estate to post a bond on Shayesteh's behalf, according to court records. At the same time, Tony Bravo was being accused of giving kickbacks to police and local officials in Maywood, and about to come under investigation by the FBI, according to elected officials and police sources in Maywood. That probe is ongoing, law enforcement sources say.

Shayesteh is described in government affidavits sworn by agents with Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement as an opium addict with a gambling problem. He has been convicted of fraud in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Arizona, and was indicted in two drug trafficking cases in federal court in Los Angeles in 2005.

Shayesteh, according to his own sworn declaration filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, and sworn declarations by his handlers with the Department of Homeland Security, is a government snitch associated with alleged drug traffickers. Before 2005, he provided federal agents with information about opium trafficking from Mexico to El Paso and El Paso to Los Angeles, and about illegal activities within the Iranian-American community in Los Angeles. He has served time in federal prison for credit card fraud.

One of the cases involves an alleged international drug trafficking and money-laundering ring involving a jewelry design store in downtown Los Angeles owned by a man named Mehrdad Lari, a wealthy Santa Monica businessman.

According to a federal indictment, in 2003, German authorities and the Drug Enforcement Administration seized close to 600 pounds of opium - valued at $5.4 million once processed into heroin - from an international drug organization that extends to Los Angeles, where Lari is known as the "boss of the bosses." According to the indictment, Lari would sell opium from Germany and Iran - smuggled into the U.S. in false bottomed suitcases - wire the money to international locations, buy property and vehicles, set up limited liability companies, and refinance homes and property in a complex scheme to launder the drug proceeds. Lari pleaded guilty to using a phone to commit a felony drug offense; on March 27, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison.

According to court documents, the transactions that led to Shayesteh's arrest involved $64,000 in checks deposited to Lari's jewelry company account, Mallery Design, which federal authorities allege is a front for purifying and selling opium and laundering money. The checks came from a company owned by Shayesteh called KBR Coachworks, also known as Regal Auto Sales, according to court documents.

Several months ago, the U.S. Attorney's Office dismissed Shayesteh from the case against Lari and a dozen others, however, for lack of evidence that he acted in a conspiracy to deal drugs and launder money. He claimed checks from KBR Coachworks to Mallery Design were loans.

Then, a month or so later, a second drug trafficking case involving the seizure of eight pounds of opium from Shayesteh's Reseda apartment fell apart and ended in his conviction for lying to investigators.

A review of court documents shows that Homeland Security's immigration and customs enforcement agents botched the second case with an illegal search of Shayesteh's residence that the court later invalidated - despite Shayesteh's admission, according to documents, that he "got involved" with an associate who "smuggled two kilos in." Meanwhile, Shayesteh cooperated with authorities by telling them about international drug smuggling from Mexico and criminal activity in the Iranian community in L.A., according to a sworn declaration he signed on May 31, 2007.

But it was an entirely different kind of legal matter that spurred Cedillo's interest in righting the wrongs of the 30-day impound policy.

Taking on the law

Ricardo Castillo was driving to a yard sale with his wife and kids in the family's 2004 Chevy Malibu one September day in 2005, when a Maywood police officer pulled him over for having some fabric attached to his front passenger window.

Castillo had an Arizona driver's license but no California driver's license. So the officer seized his car - worth $12,000 but invaluable in terms of his ability to get to work - and had Maywood Club Towing, under an exclusive contract with the city, tow it to an impound lot.

The next day, Castillo called Maywood Police Department and said that a licensed driver was available to come pick up the car. An officer told him that his car would remain impounded for 30 days.

By the time the 30 days was up, Castillo was required to pay $1,500 in fees for the towing, impound, and the release of the car. It was a price he could not afford. Instead, Castillo forfeited his car, and with it his means of travel to and from work.

Castillo's plight is hardly unique. Tens of thousands of immigrants in California have their cars seized each year, as cities aggressively enforce a state law that punishes unlicensed drivers - in particular those who are not entitled to a license because of their immigrant status.

The same month, Juan Salazar, also from Maywood, had his 1990 Oldsmobile impounded because the driver lacked a valid license. Salazar was four blocks away and ready to retrieve his car, but Maywood police refused to release it. Eventually Salazar got his car back, after paying $400 to Maywood Club Towing and $200 to Maywood police.

The problem is not just in Maywood, which, according to police sources there, towed more than 17,000 cars in the last five years, before a public outcry led to a change in city policy.

From Escondido to Santa Rosa, immigrants forfeit their cars for driving without licenses because the price of another used car is less than the cost to get a seized car out of an impound. Advocacy groups say predatory towing companies and greedy cities are targeting Latino immigrants, forcing them to buy used cars that are destined for a tax lien sale.

Perhaps more troubling is that self-declared champions of working class immigrants have ascended to power at the local and state level, yet have been slow to rectify the vicious cycle of vehicle forfeiture that torments those very same working-class immigrants.

"It amounts to a municipal tax on immigrants," says Nativo Lopez, national director of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamerica, who spoke one day last summer on the South Steps of Los Angeles City Hall. "The economic devastation in the immigrant community is incalculable."

Lopez spoke to a handful of Spanish-language journalists that day, yet there wasn't an L.A. city official or politician in sight. But then, the tow truck issue - inseparable from a decade-long debate over driver's licenses for illegal immigrants - puts government officials in a quandary.

A federal class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court names the city and county of Los Angeles as defendants, and seeks to overturn a state law that allows for such 30-day impounds. The lawsuit, in which Salazar and Castillo are plaintiffs, charges that local governments and police agencies throughout California have violated the constitutional rights of its undocumented residents.

In addition, law enforcers believe that aggressive towing and impound policies are necessary to keep unlicensed drivers off the roads, for public safety reasons. But there might be another reason why many city and state politicians shy from the topic of city towing and impound policies.

Each year, tiny cities such as Maywood, South Gate, Cudahy, and Bell Gardens rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in impound fees. Los Angeles takes in more than a half dozen smaller cities combined. That money can be budgeted for police purposes, or any purpose the city chooses.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn recalls the first time she became irked by L.A.'s towing policy. It was just before Christmas in 2005. Hahn wanted to see an LAPD sobriety checkpoint in action.

But sobriety was not the real reason LAPD officers were stopping cars that December day in Wilmington, in the middle of Hahn's council district.

She recalls a troubling scene: "Police had pulled people over and forced them out of their cars with their belongings, including Christmas presents. Entire families were sitting on the curb by the side of the road. One family had been to a dinner party, they had dishes of tamales sitting on their laps."

Hahn inquired if the motorists were being arrested for drunk driving, but was alarmed to find the reason entire families were having their cars towed was because the driver had no license. "It dawned on me what we were doing," she recalls. "I thought, what happens now?" Police told her that the cars would be impounded for 30 days. "I was told most of them would simply go to an auction and buy another car. These were hardworking families that use their car to go to church on Sunday and work on Monday. There must have been 20 cars there. It just seemed wrong."

Moved by what she witnessed, the councilwoman told LAPD Chief Bill Bratton she did not want these types of checkpoints in her district. She says the police stopped doing them.

Then, in June, she seconded a motion by Councilman Jose Huizar to review the mandatory 30-day hold on impounded cars, in light of a federal court of appeals ruling that, according to Cedillo, says it is unconstitutional for police to impound a car solely because the driver is driving without a license.

However, Bratton recently lifted a self-imposed moratorium on 30-day impounds and so far has faced little opposition from the City Council.

For police, the issue is a no-brainer: they point to statistics that a large number of car accidents involve unlicensed drivers. "I can't tell you how many times as a patrol officer I came up on a brutal car accident, only to find that at least one of the participants was driving without a license," says Detective Ben Jones of the L.A. Police Commission's Investigation Division.

For L.A. city officials, the math could be even easier. A recent report in the L.A. Times found that the city impounded 47,000 cars in 2006 because a driver had no license. Current city law allows the city to impound those cars for 30 days. Despite months of requests for public information, the LAPD failed to disclose how much money it makes from these impounds - or how many cars are never re-claimed.

None of those in the political community who are troubled by Cedillo's rushing to the aid Beltran question the righteousness of his cause.

Risks of helping a pal

In fact, Cedillo is not the only one standing by Beltran. And that perplexes prominent local and state politicians.

State Senator Ron Calderon employs Beltran as a field deputy. Calderon's brother and sister-in-law, Tom and Marcella Calderon, held a fundraiser June 21 at their home for Beltran, according to an invitation to the event obtained by CityBeat.

Calderon has resisted calls to fire Beltran by angry constituents who fear that Beltran is not fit to represent their interests. Calderon paid more than $28,000 to Beltran for campaign workers salaries, office expenses, and reimbursement for campaign expenses from February to June 2006, FPPC reports show. Beltran's consulting firm operated out of Calderon's campaign headquarters in 2006.

Calderon refused to answer CityBeat's questions about his field deputy. One former employer of Beltran's was more talkative. Former Assemblywoman Judy Chu, now vice chair of the State Board of Equalization, hired Beltran to work as a field deputy for her Assembly office in 2005. When Chu got wind of Beltran's political consulting activities she gave him a choice: cease outside campaign and political activities, or give up his position as field deputy. Beltran walked, Chu said, and was hired by Calderon, after helping Calderon in his 2006 campaign.

"Mario seemed like a young man with high ideals," Chu said recently, when asked about Beltran's widely reported legal troubles and the ongoing investigations that threaten his political future. "I am extremely shocked and disappointed that he went for the trappings of an elected official. He seems to have let himself be taken by every temptation there is."

If Chu sounds as if she is harsh on Beltran, it might be because she is troubled on other levels.

According to Chu, while Beltran was her field deputy, he also was working weekends for a downtown Los Angeles nightclub that has drawn scrutiny from police and local officials in recent months. Chu tells CityBeat that she urged Beltran to disclose his night job to the Fair Political Practices Commission. However, the commission has no record that he ever did. Nor does it have any record of Beltran's financial disclosures regarding his political consulting and campaign activities.

When Beltran was arrested earlier this year and charged with filing a false police report, he had been drinking at the same establishment where he once worked, the popular and trendy 740 Club. The nightclub and at least one of its representatives have been at the center of a number of troubling reports.

Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is considering a nuisance abatement action against the club, according to L.A. Councilman Jose Huizar, based on neighborhood disturbances and police reports of violence and gang activity.

One of the club's key representatives, Steven Carmona, a former L.A. planning commissioner who helped secure building permits, was indicted recently for allegedly taking a bribe in an unrelated federal racketeering case. So far there is no indication that Carmona's connection to the club has anything to do with Beltran.

Yet Beltran - along with Huizar and Maywood and Huntington Park City Attorney Francisco Leal - have hosted political fundraisers at the 740 Club. And though Beltran's actual connection to the club is unclear, it was an aspect of his life that bothered Chu. "I was increasingly concerned about his outside activities," she said. "He boasted of not reporting his earnings, and then we heard he was some sort of manager at this nightclub. Then he confirmed his activities as a political consultant. I didn't have a good feeling. We wanted to separate ourselves from him. It was intuition."

Of Tom Calderon's recent fundraiser for Beltran, Chu says, "People cannot believe anyone would even attend that event, much less hold it in the first place."

L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti put it another way: "I can see Calderon sticking by this guy, but I don't understand Gil [Cedillo]. Obviously, Gil has strong ties in Bell Gardens. I can't believe Mario's still in office. I've had problem employees before. We deal with it quickly."

Voters are left to wonder why an elected official like Beltran would go anywhere near Shayesteh - and why Cedillo would stick his neck out for Beltran. Compared to federal drug and money laundering investigations and credit card fraud schemes Shayesteh has been involved with in the past, an arrest for alleged criminal threats might be just a minor inconvenience. Or maybe it will lead to other more meaningful revelations, given his self-described proclivity for cooperating with government investigators.

For Cedillo, the time is right to stand by his man in Bell Gardens. "He's not my first friend or ally to be investigated by the FBI, and he won't be the first to be completely exonerated."