Former Central Basin Municipal Water District General Manager Alex Rojas took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes after steering a construction management contract to a company owned by a man accused of bribing Rojas at his prior job as well, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors have charged Alex Rojas, 52, and Luis Rojas, 60, who are not related, with bribery, money laundering and conspiracy for an alleged scheme in which Alex Rojas manipulated a public bidding process at Central Basin specifically to support the selection of an “otherwise unqualified company” formed just three days before the deadline in late 2020.

One of the two winners, Capstone Partners Group, was secretly run by past and current employees of Del Terra, a construction firm owned by Luis Rojas, who was previously accused of bribing Alex Rojas in the Bassett Unified School District years earlier.

Luis Rojas co-owned Capstone and was jointly listed on its bank account, according to prosecutors. His involvement was never disclosed publicly.

Central Basin Municipal Water District is a public water wholesaler with few employees of its own and primarily contracts out to others to cover day-to-day operations. It serves nearly 2 million people from 24 cities and unincorporated areas in southeast Los Angeles County, with its boundaries stretching from La Habra Heights in the east to Carson in the west and from Signal Hill in the south to Montebello in north.

Alex Rojas was ousted by Central Basin’s water board amid a cloud of suspicion in November.

Contractor at center of probe

From January 2021 to October 2022, Central Basin paid Capstone $797,080 for various projects, including roof repairs, retrofitting recycled water systems and increasing water efficiency in public schools, according to the criminal complaint.

After Capstone received a check for $188,356 from the district in late January 2022, it sent $155,000 to Del Terra. Roughly a month later, Del Terra paid $15,000 to Greenvale Consulting Services, a company registered to Alex Rojas, and then sent another $27,000 to Greenvale that June.

Capstone and Greenvale listed their offices as the same co-working space in Pasadena, public records showed. Rojas previously denied knowing that Capstone was connected to Del Terra, though he had worked with some of the same employees in Bassett.

Both Alex Rojas and Luis Rojas pleaded not guilty during an arraignment in early June.

Nareg Gourjian, an attorney listed as representing Alex Rojas, did not respond to a phone call or an email. Nor did his prior attorney, Craig Missakian, who was appointed to U.S. attorney in the Northern District of California in May.

Attorney: Case ‘flimsy’

Luis Rojas’ attorney, Michael Zweiback, declined to comment on the alleged payments to Greenvale and accused the District Attorney’s Office of “yet again” filing a “factually incorrect” and “flimsy” case.

“I’m not going to address the specific facts other than to say they are incorrect and they will be proven to be incorrect as we have proven previously with the DA’s allegations,” Zweiback said. “They continue to drum up old conduct without any direct facts that point to any misconduct by Mr. Luis Rojas. I believe these charges are a direct result of the fact that they know their case involving Bassett is factually flimsy and without actual support.”

Central Basin board member Juan Garza, who pushed for Alex Rojas’ firing in November, said the new charges “feel like complete vindication to what we’ve been saying for over a year now, which is that there’s clear evidence that this agency was abused by its former general manager and its vendor.”

“It is apparent to me that there is a direct link between Del Terra and Alex Rojas just like there was in the Bassett Unified case,” Garza said. “It is enraging to know that we have public officials and vendors who are abusing their responsibilities for personal gain against what the public expects of them.”

Capstone suddenly ended its agreement with Central Basin in August 2022, the same month that both Alex Rojas and Luis Rojas were first charged by the District Attorney’s Office for the alleged bribery scheme in Bassett Unified.

Bassett accusations

In that case, Erudio Technology Solutions, another company formed by Alex Rojas, allegedly received $400,000 from Luis Rojas’ now-deceased sister, Virginia Campos, from May 2015 to January 2017, during a time when Alex Rojas served as superintendent in Bassett and managed multimillion-dollar contracts with Del Terra.

A March 2019 report, authored by Bassett’s general counsel, Francisco Leal, in response to growing concerns from the Los Angeles County Office of Education over issues with Del Terra’s work in the Montebello Unified School District, alleged Del Terra was paid $1,037,750 for work that could not be substantiated. That’s on top of the more than $4 million Del Terra received for managing a $30 million bond project for the district.

The District Attorney’s Office accused Rojas of perjury for not reporting the payments to Erudio on his financial disclosures in 2016, 2017 and 2018. At the time, his attorney, Missakian, denied the allegations and stated that “whatever Dr. Rojas received was appropriate in amount and for services rendered in good faith.”

The Bassett case is still pending three years later and has yet to progress past the initial arraignment. Both Alex and Luis Rojas have pleaded not guilty.

The same day that Alex Rojas resigned as superintendent, Bassett’s school board voted to hire Greenvale, at a rate of $12,178 per month, to provide consulting services related to “executive management, bond modernization program, budget, facilities, information technology infrastructure and integration, curriculum, multi-year planning (fiscal/staffing), and general district operations.”

A third case against Luis Rojas, filed by the same prosecutors in 2020, was dismissed as part of a plea deal in 2023. In that case, Del Terra pleaded no contest and was fined $41,070, received one year of probation and was ordered not to dissolve for making illegal campaign contributions in the names of others. In exchange, prosecutors dropped charges against Luis Rojas and Pico Rivera Councilman Gustavo Camacho.

That case originally was how prosecutors uncovered the alleged $400,000 payment to Erudio in Bassett.

“It is the same deputy DA that has filed this case, as well as the prior case and the case before that, in which Mr. Luis Rojas has never been found responsible for any criminal conduct,” Zweiback said.

Board member lawsuit

The connection between Del Terra and Capstone was uncovered by Central Basin board member Leticia Vasquez-Wilson after she sued the district alleging that Rojas had retaliated against her for raising concerns about his conduct. The suit claimed Rojas limited her ability to speak at meetings and refused to provide documents she said were needed to serve the communities she represents.

“I’m glad to see the District Attorney’s Office is doing its job and investigating corrupt public officials,” Vasquez-Wilson said in response to the new charges. “Bringing accountability and transparency to Central Basin has been a difficult job for me. I have been harassed, intimidated and bullied by Alex Rojas and the directors that continued to support his conduct.”

Vasquez-Wilson’s attorney deposed Capstone’s owner, Manuel Jaramillo, in June 2023. He admitted during the testimony that Luis Rojas had helped him form the company, though he claimed that Luis was not involved in the operation at all beyond serving as a mentor.

Capstone’s checks, obtained through discovery in that case, however, showed that Luis Rojas signed for the payments. Jaramillo testified that he terminated Capstone’s contract in August 2022 due to concerns about an article related to Vasquez-Wilson, though he could not recall the article’s contents. He denied the arrests of Luis Rojas and Alex Rojas that same month influenced his decision.

Distrust grows

The scrutiny of Alex Rojas, who continued as general manager despite his arrest in 2022, amplified after that point. Board members eventually voted to hire an independent auditor to review Rojas’ handling of the district’s finances. The third party investigations concluded that Rojas had sidestepped internal controls at Central Basin while evaluating and overseeing the contract with Capstone and had allegedly inflated his salary and benefits by more than $75,000 without the water board’s approval.

Vasquez-Wilson’s retaliation lawsuit, though critical in uncovering the alleged corruption, was ultimately thrown out. The water district attempted to have a judge force her to pay $818,000 in attorney’s fees to cover the cost of defending against the case. She recently refiled in the case in federal court.

Central Basin’s board voted to fire Alex Rojas without cause in November during a special meeting in which three of the board’s seven members were absent. The board paid Rojas roughly $200,000 to cover the remainder of his contract, which would have expired in August 2025.

He has since filed a lawsuit asking a judge to reinstate him to the position, alleging the board failed to comply with California’s open meeting law, its own regulations and his employment agreement.

The crux of Rojas’ lawsuit largely revolves around an amendment to his contract in 2022 that requires the vote of six of seven board members to take “any adverse employment action” against him. The district’s administrative code similarly includes language requiring a four-fifths’ vote to terminate a general manager.

The board members who voted to get rid of Rojas took the stance that those thresholds apply only to the board members present during the vote. Two members interviewed at the time acknowledged the likelihood of a legal challenge, but said they did not believe the amendments to Rojas’ contract would stand up in court.

The reinstatement case is still pending and has recently sparked a counter lawsuit from the district. Officials hope the new charges will give them ammunition to squash the former general manager’s bid to get his job back.

“We will be submitting the new development to the courts to fight back against reinstating a clearly corrupt former public official into this extremely vital public agency,” said Garza, the Central Basin board member. “We’re confident that our efforts to prevent this agency from further abuse will be vindicated in court.”