FBI Informant Story in El Paso Times

Ramon Bracamontes has an interesting story in today's edition of the El Paso Times regarding an informant in the FBI public corruption case. The informant is a witness in the case against Adrian Pena, who used to work for CF Jordan and is accused of bribing former County Commissioner Betti Flores.

Flores plead guilty to taking a bribe and is awaiting sentencing.

If you haven't read the story, you should read it before continuing on this piece.

The piece doesn't say how the information came to light, but if it was through a source, I'm pretty sure I talked to the same guy yesterday. From what I can tell, it appears that the source had been shopping the story around to the media over the last few days.

A man came to the station yesterday with several documents and part of what he told a reporter for the station and I was what was reported in the El Paso Times. The man would later explain that he acquired the documents through a friend of his at the courthouse. He didn't say whether it was the county or federal courthouse.

The man identified himself as the father of Adrian Flores.

We asked him if he was willing to go on camera and he agreed, which is why I am identifying him. He never asked us to remain anonymous, so I don't know if he asked any other media outlets to remain anonymous.

The man prefaced what he was about to tell me by saying that "What I am about to tell you is through the rose-colored lenses of a father..."

The documents are the same documents referred to in the Bracamontes piece. What he was upset about was that he thought that the Court was doing something wrong because the documents appeared on PACER, witch is a records management system used in the courts, then disappeared, then reappeared. According to Mr. Pena the documents were able to be viewed, which I assume is when they were printed out, then they disappeared and then they were back on the system Friday morning but were sealed at that time and therefore not able to be viewed.

The documents, which appear to be discovery motions, actually said the word SEALED on them. My assessment was that the situation appeared to be that the documents were posted on PACER but weren't sealed. I took this to be a clerical error. Then pulled down, and finally reloaded under sealed.

That was my conclusion anyway.

If that was the information provided to the Times, I assume it wasn't in the piece because they came to a similar conclusion.

What will get the public's attention is the fact that the informant was paid. Paying informants isn't out of the ordinary, but its the part the public will latch on to.

In my opinion, what is more significant is who the informant is. The informant is Elizabeth Sotelo. That is significant because of who she was working for and who she ended up working for, but I'll get to that in a minute.

The other reason its significant is because an informant in the public corruption case was identified. Most people assumed that the star witness would be Betti Flores. I don't think too many people realized that the FBI had someone else other than Flores and someone so close to the situation.

Sotelo was Flores' assistant while she was County Commissioner. At the time, the commissioners only had one assistant. Word around the courthouse was the Sotelo was very close to Flores and the two were always together. Some elected officials have staff that never leave the office and are rarely seen in public, others have staff that are with them in the field all the time, to the point of when you see one, you usually see the other.

That's covers who Sotelo worked for at the time.

Flores was defeated in her re-election bid by now County Judge-elect Veronica Escobar. When Escobar was elected, Sotelo was picked up by another member of Commissioner's Court...Luis Sarinana.

Commissioner Sarinana's office was one of the offices raided by the FBI in the opening days of the public corruption scandal but has yet to be charged with anything.