Gallardo wanted in city theft case

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Evidence of invoice altering…

Arrest warrant issued after court no-show

Former Cotulla Main Street Manager Margie Gallardo is the subject of a felony arrest warrant this week after she failed to appear in district court for her April 29 arraignment on charges related to the alleged misappropriation of city funds.

Gallardo, 42, has been charged with a state jail felony for forgery of a government document up to a value of $30,000 and a third-degree felony for theft by a public servant up to a value of $20,000. She had been indicted by a La Salle County grand jury in March and was arrested in Frio County in April. Her bond had been set at $15,000 on each charge.

La Salle County Clerk Sonia Maldonado confirmed on Tuesday this week that Gallardo is listed as wanted and may be arrested at any time.

Gallardo had been employed by the city of Cotulla at a $47,000 salary for just over a year when she was fired from the position on January 1, 2024. An investigation was undertaken by the Texas

Rangers into allegations she had misappropriated funds from City Hall and had altered contractor invoices for her own benefit.

After her termination Gallardo alleged in a civil suit that Carlos Benavides had caused her to lose her job by implying that she had received kickbacks from a contractor and that she had used her position at the city to support a political candidate. Gallardo claimed the statements were false and sought compensation for her loss.

One of the first to alert city officials of apparent mismanagement in the Main Street Program office, Benavides was a project manager in safety compliance for a contractor in 2023 and had raised questions over a series of bills he was receiving for construction plans.

“I was doing safety contract work related to a construction project,” Benavides said in an interview this week. “I was hired to oversee OSHA compliance, and Ms. Gallardo started interfering and told me that she was in charge, that I was going to have to deal with her.

“My reply was that I had not been hired by her,” Benavides said. “I was hired by the contractor. I did not answer to the Main Street manager. But then I started getting bills for construction plans that I believed should have already been covered by the contract.”

Benavides indicated that he had begun developing suspicions that Gallardo’s apparent interference in the contract was an indicator of a double-billing scheme.

“I went to City Hall,” Benavides said. “I asked the city administrator about it. I just asked if this was right, that I was being billed. He said it was not, and he would look into it.”

Gallardo was suspended from her job in the Main Street office a short time after Benavides’ visit to City Hall.

“I believe that someone at City Hall contacted Gallardo and told her that it was because of something I had said that she had lost her job,” Benavides said this week. “I had nothing to do with that, and I don’t know about any political campaign funds. All I did was ask whether the contract billing was correct.”

Gallardo dropped her defamation suit against Benavides after allegedly admitting to her own lawyer that she was wrongfully suing the safety compliance contractor.

Benavides also served as the Democratic Party chairman in La Salle County and gave up the position last year when he was elected a county constable, a position in which he continues to serve.

“The sad part about that is I had to hire a lawyer to defend myself,” Benavides said. “I had to spend money on that.”

The city of Cotulla listed a rake of complaints against Gallardo in the decision by City Administrator David Wright to terminate the Main Street Program manager. Among them is the allegation that Gallardo used her position for personal gain.

According to City Hall, Gallardo may have received money from a contractor hired by the city to design new public restrooms at Plaza Florita and had not notified anyone in city government that the builder, Jose Montes, was her brother-in-law.

Montes’ contract with the city was terminated after it was revealed he had failed to comply with insurance requirements for the task.

In other allegations against the Main Street Program manager, the city administrator said Gallardo had presented him with a fund requisition for more than $5,000 that would be used to pay for patriotic flag displays on Front Street.

“I said it was too much,” Wright said of the request. “I said I wasn’t going to pay that. But a week later, Councilman Eloy Zertuche’s wife, Sandra, came to City Hall and demanded to know where her campaign signs were. She said she had paid Margie a thousand dollars for them.

“We began an investigation into these contracts and invoices,” Wright said. “We found evidence in Gallardo’s computer that she had used an invoice editing program to make alterations to that invoice and to others.

“We believe Gallardo used the invoice alterations to have money sent to someone else,” the city administrator said. “That’s when we called the Texas Rangers.”

The city’s evidence includes a November 2023 invoice from Thompson Print & Mailing Solutions of San Antonio, listing the customer as “Margie Gonzalez” at City of Cotulla / Main Street with an order for two 10’ canopies in four-color dye sublimation costing a total $1,797, “1 each Eloy and Sandra Zertuche;” and two 8’ tablecloths and two 9’ flags, likewise listed as custom-printed on both sides in four-color process “for Eloy and Sandra Zertuche,” totaling $837.

Indictments filed against Gallardo by the La Salle County grand jury included one in which she allegedly altered an invoice to reflect the name Jose Herrera, who had apparently not authorized the billing, and represented an attempt to defraud the city of $1,600 in August 2023.

In another indictment, Gallardo is accused of having committed fraud by misappropriating money from the city. The charge lists the December 2023 offense as “acquiring or otherwise exercising control over property, namely US currency, of the value of $2,500 or more, but less than $30,000, from the city of Cotulla, the owner thereof, without the effective consent of the owner, namely by deception,” and that she did so in her position as a public servant.

The city was barred from commenting on the case during the course of the investigation.

Gallardo was herself the subject of a defamation suit in Frio County this year, when she and former Pearsall Mayor Mary Moore were alleged by a number of defendants in a county election fraud case to have made false allegations against elected officials and local residents. An investigation by state authorities into election wrongdoing was triggered in part by the complaints.

Moore is the candidate for election to the position of Frio County judge, replacing Rochelle Camacho, who was elected four years ago and who has since been suspended from duty under a felony indictment for her alleged role in a vote harvesting scheme.

The defamation suit against Moore and Gallardo was dismissed on May 1 by District Judge Jennifer Dillingham.