A former Española city manager was accused of stealing more than $18,000 in less than one month of being on the job.
The New Mexico attorney general’s office filed a 20-page criminal complaint charging David Valdez with embezzling municipal funds.
“This is a very tragic black eye for all public officials in the state of New Mexico,” Attorney General Hector Balderas said to KOB 4.
The complaint said that Valdez was hired on April 1, 2019, and within two weeks an employee reported that “a bag of cash and checks for deposit allegedly [went] missing from the vault.” Valdez is among the few people with access to the vault, according to KOB 4. He was fired after only four months on the job.
Part of the evidence, according to Balderas, is security camera footage that shows Valdez going in and out of the vault several times. “More than $6,600 in cash and $11,600 in checks are still unaccounted for,” KOB 4 reported.
An investigation revealed that Valdez may have been under financial pressure, due to what the KOB 4 report said is “an obsessive gambling habit.” Evidence showed Valdez visiting casinos and spending thousands of dollars.
“There was definitely some financial pressure; it might have been self-incurred,” Balderas said to KOB 4.
This was not the first time Valdez was suspected of embezzling. He faced similar charges when he was the district manager of the Colorado City Metropolitan District in Pueblo County. He pleaded guilty to stealing between $20,000 and $100,000, according to KOB 4. That information was not known until after Valdez was fired from his Española job.