The former Gilroy Unified School District Board of Education trustee charged with swindling $52,000 from a leading South County nonprofit; using campaign donations for personal expenses; and defrauding an international engineering firm out of “tens of thousands of dollars” for meetings that supposedly never occurred; will appear at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 17 for probation and sentencing in Dept. 38 at the Hall of Justice in San Jose.
Francisco Dominguez, 51, pled no contest July 29 to one count of grand theft, three counts of perjury and two counts count of felony grand theft. He was convicted on all counts and faces up to one year in jail, probation, an estimated $40,000 to $50,000 in restitution payments to the South County nonprofit organization and another restitution payment in the ballpark of $10,000 to the engineering firm, according to Deputy District Attorney John Chase.
“I don’t know if he’ll get a year,” Chase said Monday. “We will argue about how much time he should do.”
Dominguez was previously charged in 2012 for felony theft for defrauding the South County Collaborative, a Gilroy charity, as well as an international engineering firm contracted to perform outreach for the California High Speed Rail Authority.
Then, in May 2013, District Attorney Jeff Rosen slapped Dominguez with four fresh accusations of grand theft and perjury for using about $3,000 from his 2010 GUSD school board campaign account for nonpolitical purposes such as concessions at Dodger’s games and dozens of pit-stops for bagels, fast food and coffee.
“When you’re at the concession stand at a Dodger’s game, and you’re looking in your wallet and you see the debit card that goes to your campaign account, it should give you a pause. But I guess for him, it didn’t. He pulled it out anyway,” the Deputy DA noted.
Chase said he isn’t sure if there will be any restitution payments for the misused campaign funds, as there is “no feasible way to figure out what portion goes to which donors.”
The DA’s office merged all six charges together for criminal proceedings, making a strong case for the prosecution team, Chase previously said.
Dominguez, the sole proprietor of his own company, DZ Consulting, resigned from the GUSD Board of Education Nov. 9, 2011 after allegations that he embezzled from the South County Collaborative came to light.
The DA’s office launched an investigation in early June 2011 following reports by the Gilroy Dispatch, which in May 2011 broke the news that Dominguez had come under fire for “systematic” embezzlement.
From Feb. 1, 2011 to November 30, 2011, Dominguez also “fraudulently over-billed” Parsons Corporation, an international engineering and construction management firm, according to the DA’s office.
According to DA Investigator Terrence Simpson’s statement of probable cause, Dominguez faked that he attended meetings in which he was supposed to be surveying public opinion on high-speed rail.
The investigation shows that Dominguez signed an $80,000 contract with Parsons in February 2011 to assist with community outreach efforts – but billed the firm for many nonexistent meetings with a wide variety of community organizations, school officials, business owners and neighborhood groups.
Nearly all of the people interviewed by DA Investigator Terrence Simpson “said they had not met with Dominguez about high speed rail,” according to the DA’s office. “Dominguez also documented to his employers that he had personally attended a wide variety of scheduled community meetings. In many cases, the meetings he documented did not occur on those dates.”
