Ricardo Pacheco Pleaded Guilty to Bribery in June 2020. He Was Sentenced Six Years Later.
The former Baldwin Park councilman got 18 months on Monday, and so did former Compton councilman Isaac Galvan. Federal announcements had already put Pacheco's sentencing on the calendar twice — February 2025, then March 30, 2026.
Ricardo Pacheco pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge in June 2020 and resigned from the Baldwin Park City Council, where he had sat since 1997. He was sentenced on Monday: 18 months in federal prison, a $10,000 fine and $219,755 in forfeiture, LAist reported. Six years and two months separate the plea from the sentence. In between, the Justice Department twice printed a date for that hearing in its own announcements.
The same morning, U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II gave Isaac Jacob Galvan — Compton City Council, 2013 to 2022 — the same 18 months, plus $323,557 in restitution to the IRS, according to LAist. Galvan pleaded guilty in December 2025 to paying Pacheco $70,000 for votes on Baldwin Park cannabis permits, and to going four straight years without filing a federal tax return.
The dates the government published
We read the U.S. attorney's own announcements and lined up what they said about the calendar. In the release that unsealed two other guilty pleas on December 5, 2024, the government wrote that "Pacheco's sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 2025." In the release announcing Galvan's plea on December 9, 2025, the same sentence appears with a different date: March 30, 2026. The hearing happened on August 24, 2026.
Galvan's calendar moved too. The December 2024 release said he and his co-defendant were headed to trial on June 10, 2025. The December 2025 release said the co-defendant's trial was set for February 2026 and that Galvan had just pleaded guilty instead, with sentencing scheduled for June 8, 2026. He was sentenced eleven weeks after that date, on the same morning as the man he admitted bribing.
Neither release explains a delay, and this desk is not going to invent one. What the releases do say is that Pacheco "has agreed to cooperate with the government's ongoing investigation" — and that while his sentencing sat on the calendar, five more men pleaded guilty in schemes the filings connect to him.
What Baldwin Park was selling
Baldwin Park began permitting cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and distribution inside its city limits in June 2017. Soon afterward, according to the plea agreements described in the December 2025 announcement, Pacheco began soliciting bribes from businesses that wanted those permits, and agreed to use his seat to help them get approved. He was the city's mayor pro tempore in 2018.
Galvan's part started small. He paid Pacheco $10,000 in August 2017 to lock in support for a consulting client he did not yet have, prosecutors said. The client turned out to be W&F International Corp., a Diamond Bar import-export business, and Galvan then moved $70,000 from its owner, Yichang Bai, to Pacheco. Pacheco voted for W&F's marijuana permit in June and July of 2018, and later that year voted for the company's bid to relocate its operations.
The last payment in the record went to Pacheco's legal bills. Shortly after the relocation votes, he asked Galvan to get more money out of W&F for his legal defense fund. Galvan relayed a request for $25,000; Bai countered at $20,000 and produced seven checks drawn on accounts that belonged to neither him nor his company, the December 2025 announcement says. Galvan admitted separately that he filed no federal returns for 2017 through 2020, concealed his control of a shell company called I&I LLC, failed to report roughly $560,525 in income, and cost the Treasury $115,816.
The other case, and the coffee shop
Pacheco's own guilty plea was not in the cannabis case at all. In a wire account published by HeySoCal, prosecutors said he solicited and received $37,900 between January and October 2018 from a Baldwin Park police officer who was working at the FBI's direction, in exchange for his political support of the police association's contract with the city — a contract worth at least $4.4 million over three years. He voted for it in March 2018. The largest single payment, $20,000 in cash in an envelope at a Baldwin Park coffee shop, came seven months after the vote.
The same account says Pacheco forfeited $83,145 in cash seized by the FBI, including $62,900 he admitted burying in two spots in his backyard. LAist reported that Monday's $219,755 forfeiture is on top of the buried money, not the same money counted twice.
Six guilty pleas, five of them public servants
Ricardo Pacheco, Baldwin Park City Council, 1997 to June 2020. Pleaded guilty in June 2020 to one count of bribery in the police-contract case, and resigned as part of the deal. Sentenced August 24, 2026 to 18 months, a $10,000 fine and $219,755 in forfeiture. His restitution figure has not been set.
Isaac Jacob Galvan, Compton City Council, 2013 to May 2022. Pleaded guilty December 9, 2025 to one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds and one count of evasion of tax assessment. Sentenced August 24, 2026 to 18 months and $323,557 in restitution to the IRS. The statutory maximums were 10 years on the bribery count and five on the tax count.
Yichang Bai, owner of W&F International Corp. Arrested with Galvan in September 2023 and initially pleaded not guilty; the December 2025 announcement had him going to trial in February 2026. He pleaded guilty instead and was sentenced in July to 20 months and a $3,000 fine, per the HeySoCal wire account; Los Cerritos News put the term at one year and eight months, which is the same number said the other way.
Robert Manuel Nacionales Tafoya, Baldwin Park city attorney, December 2013 to October 2022. Pleaded guilty December 5, 2023 to federal bribery and tax evasion. He admitted facilitating the Galvan scheme and evading roughly $650,000 in federal tax liability. The release that unsealed the plea a year later gave no sentencing date for him.
Edgar Pascual Cisneros, Commerce city manager, November 2017 to December 2023. Pleaded guilty November 6, 2023 to federal bribery. He admitted helping a company obtain a Baldwin Park marijuana permit through about $45,000 in bribes, against a promise of at least $235,000 more for himself. The same release gave no sentencing date for him either.
Gabriel Chavez, former San Bernardino County planning commissioner. Pleaded guilty in November 2022 to a federal bribery charge, in a scheme Pacheco admitted orchestrating. The December 2024 release scheduled his sentencing for April 2025, and that is the last word the two releases we read carry about his case.
The totals, added up
We added the financial orders together across the three men who have now been sentenced: $229,755 from Pacheco, being the fine plus the forfeiture; $323,557 in restitution from Galvan; a $3,000 fine from Bai. That is $556,312. The custodial terms come to 56 months, or four years and eight months, divided among three defendants.
Set that against what the money was reaching for. The police contract Pacheco's $37,900 was meant to support was worth at least $4.4 million over three years. The permits at the far end of Galvan's $70,000 were for a business the Baldwin Park council approved, and then approved again when it wanted to move.
What is still open
A restitution hearing for Pacheco will be scheduled in the coming weeks, LAist reported, so the number attached to his name is not final. Both Tafoya and Cisneros signed agreements to cooperate in what the Justice Department called "ongoing public corruption investigations." In this one city's paperwork, that phrase has now been accurate for six years running.
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