Brickbat: Grand Canyon Graft

Former Santa Cruz County, Arizona, Elizabeth Gutfahr faces up to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to embezzlement by a public official, money laundering, and tax evasion. Gutfahr stole more than $38 million in county funds between 2012 and 2024. She used the money to buy at least 20 cars, renovate ranches she owns, and pay other personal expenses for herself and her family. She must also pay restitution to Santa Cruz County and federal taxes of $13,143,526.

Comments

[Adans smith]

All taxes are theft, but, if you steal their ill gotten gains `they get very vindictive.

[шинка]

"Former Santa Cruz County, Arizona, Elizabeth Gutfahr faces up to..."

I think someone forget to tell us which government position this skell was abusing.

[diver64]

Exactly. Must be a county auditor or something but it would be nice to know as that would shed light on how she operated so long and got away with so much money without anyone noticing.
Oh, I read the link. Treasurer. If she stole $38 Million why is she ordered to pay back only $13 Million of it? What's with the Bank of Montreal? If she was using BMO Harris in Arizona then wouldn't this be international money laundering?

[Stupid Government Tricks]

I took that $13M as only being the federal tax, and the restitution to be full. The article link is CNN and the text is blocked by my javascript blocker. Googling shows she was a treasurer.

[diver64]

The article just says "restitution" and lists the $13 million. I guess the state is going to seize her ranches and cars to sell? Is that how it goes or does a state give the person ordered to make restitution the time to sell things themselves?

[Rossami]

Yeah, the snippet here was poorly edited. The linked article says she was County Treasurer.

[Incunabulum]

'Contributing Editor'

Everyone who writes for Reason is some sort of editor - but none of them actually do any editing.

[Chumby]

She looks old and fugly - just impose the death penalty.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

On Pay-per-view?

[AT]

She was that BLM chick, right?

[Kyle T]

How does a county with less than 50,000 people have theft of that magnitude for 10 years. Where are the audit reports? 5% loss should not be a rounding error, not for ten years.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

She was the treasurer, probably auditing herself and cooking the books for outside auditors.

[shadydave]

It's right on the border and the biggest town in the county has both a US and Mexican section.

This also follows the rule that if you're having trouble figuring out the party affiliation of the politician who did bad thing, it's almost certainly a Democrat. Not because Republicans don't do this, but news media makes sure to mention they're a Republican when they do.

[Vernon Depner]

Same with crime reports. If the race of the suspect is not mentioned or pictured, then you know they're Black or Hispanic.

[markm23]

It's about $70 per county resident per year. I've been to Nogales in Santa Cruz County and most of the people didn't look like they had $70to spare - but all ordinary people saw was the taxes collected, not a full picture of the expenditures. OTOH, many county officials did have that full picture. How damned big is the county budget that no one wondered where all that the money was going? If I lived there, when I went to vote I'd assume that every incumbent was either in on the scheme or totally incompetent.

It's 80% Hispanic, and that meant at least 80% Democrat. Perhaps that's changed this year... It doesn't seem that Hispanics that are citizens or legal permanent residents much liked the flood of illegal immigrants and fraudulent asylum seekers the Biden administration allowed. There was about a 17% shift towards Trump this year, which still leaves it 59% Democrat. I hope that learning how much county officials were stealing from them will shift them further, but how much do Mexican-Americans follow the news - and are the news media around there actually covering this?

[Zipcreature]

Well the Fed can’t pass an audit and hasn’t in 7 years so why should she?

[Think It Through]

Order to pay BOTH restitution and $13m in federal taxes? Does she get a tax credit for every dollar paid of restitution?

[Davy C]

I know, right? If you have to pay it back it shouldn't count as income. The government doesn't come to every person who gets a bank loan and say "hey, you just got a bunch of money, we're taxing that." Although maybe I shouldn't give them ideas.