Former Compton City Councilmember Isaac Galvan pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal criminal charges for bribing a Baldwin Park city councilman, whom he paid $70,000 in exchange for city marijuana permits.
Galvan, who ran a consulting service, was involved in a scheme in which he facilitated bribes to Councilman Ricardo Pacheco from one of Galvan’s clients who wanted a marijuana permit in Baldwin Park.
Galvan, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and one count of tax evasion for failing to report more than half a million dollars in income.
He served on the Compton City Council from 2013 to 2022, when he lost his seat amid a vote-rigging scandal that led to him being charged with election fraud.
In 2017, Baldwin Park began permitting the cultivation, manufacture and distribution of marijuana within its city limits. Then-Councilmember Pacheco was soliciting bribes from businesses seeking marijuana development agreements and related permits in the city, according to court documents.
In exchange for the illicit payments, Pacheco, a council member until 2020, agreed to use his position to get a firm’s marijuana permits approved, the documents say.
Galvan, who represented W&F International Corp., a Diamond Bar-based import-export business, wanted a marijuana permit for W&F in Baldwin Park.
According to the plea agreement, Galvan facilitated $70,000 in bribes to Pacheco from Yichang Bai, 52, of Arcadia, the owner and operator of W&F. Bai has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he helped orchestrate the bribery scheme, and his case is set to go to trial in February.
Galvan paid the bribes in exchange for Pacheco’s political support and the councilman’s promise to deliver Baldwin Park’s approval of marijuana permits for W&F. Pacheco then delivered, voting in favor of the firm’s marijuana permit in June and July of 2018 and, later that year, voting in favor of W&F’s bid to relocate its operations to the city.
Prosecutors say Galvan and Bai took steps to cover up their illegal payments to Pacheco by concealing Bai’s and W&F’s connections to those payments. According to the plea agreement, Bai collected checks from third parties who owed him money and then, at Galvan’s direction, gave them to Galvan with blank payee lines. Galvan then gave the checks to Pacheco, who arranged for them to be cashed, either by him or third parties, court records show.
Shortly after the votes to approve W&F’s relocation, Pacheco contacted Galvan and asked him to obtain more money from W&F for Pacheco’s legal defense fund. Galvan told Bai that Pacheco wanted $25,000 for his fundraiser, but Bai insisted on paying $20,000, according to the plea agreement.
Bai provided a total of seven checks from different bank accounts that were not Bai’s or W&F’s, court documents say. Galvan arranged for the checks to be delivered to Pacheco as further payment in exchange for his votes and support of W&F’s marijuana permit.
Galvan admitted in his plea agreement that he failed to file federal individual tax returns for the years 2017 through 2020, evading assessment of the federal taxes he owed in several ways. Galvan failed to report $560,525 in income for the tax years 2017 through 2020, resulting in a total loss to the U.S. Treasury of $115,816. He agreed to pay $323,557 in restitution to the IRS.
U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II scheduled a June 8, 2026, sentencing hearing, at which Galvan will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison on the bribery count and up to five years on the tax count.
Pacheco pleaded guilty in June 2020 to one count of bribery after an FBI sting in which a Baldwin Park police officer, working undercover, paid him nearly $38,000 in exchange for the council member’s political support of the police union’s contract with the city.
As part of a plea agreement, Pacheco agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation into the bribery scheme.
Galvan secured his last Compton City Council election by a single vote, but four of the votes that had been cast for him were disqualified after a judge found that the ballots had been submitted by people who did not live in the contested council district.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged Galvan and six others with conspiracy to commit election fraud.
According to the district attorney’s office, Galvan conspired with one of his opponents in the primary election, Jace Dawson, to send voters who lived outside the council district to vote for Galvan.
