Oliver Garcia — who recently was fired as Santa Fe County deputy treasurer after he was charged with fraud — said Monday that he’s innocent and still seeking election as county treasurer.
The current county treasurer, Victor Montoya, fired Garcia from his $63,524-a-year job in April shortly after police charged Garcia with six counts of fraud, accusing Garcia of using phony car-wash vouchers worth about $17 each.
Garcia said he dropped out of sight after the news broke last month — canceling an appointment to be interviewed by The New Mexican and not responding to messages — because he was “humiliated and hurt.”
But, he declared Monday, “I know I’m not guilty.”
Garcia said he feels someone set him up, but he doesn’t know who or why. “I wish I knew the answer to that,” he said.
A police report said the alleged fraud was brought to the attention of police by the manager of Oil Stop on Cerrillos Road, who said employees had noticed that several prepaid vouchers that were presented as payment for car washes appeared to be copies.
The manager told police he was on the alert after that, and his research revealed that falsified vouchers were used to wash four different vehicles — two belonging to Santa Fe County, one belonging to Garcia and one belonging to Garcia’s daughter.
The false vouchers appeared to be copies of ones that had been purchased by the County Treasurer’s Office, according to the police report.
The report said that when an officer visited Garcia at work March 30 to ask him about the vouchers, Garcia initially said he had no knowledge of the matter. However, after being confronted with evidence that linked the vouchers to his daughter, Garcia said he “wanted to come clean” and told the officer his daughter had purchased the tickets from “a Mexican male” in a parking lot at the business.
According to the report, Oil Stop manager Ben Enns told police that shortly after he started tracking the phony vouchers, a man tried to use one of them, and when Enns refused to honor it, the man returned with a copy of a receipt showing that the County Treasurer’s Office had purchased vouchers.
Garcia said Monday that the man was a county employee who had gotten a voucher from Garcia — who had kept the county-purchased vouchers in a vault. Garcia said the employee returned to Oil Stop with the receipt and that no one in the Treasurer’s Office at that point had any idea about the alleged copying of the vouchers.
For all he knows, Garcia said, the vouchers purchased by and mailed to the Treasurer’s Office had been copied by someone else. He said couldn’t speculate on who that might be.
“Someone made them, and I got blamed,” he said.
Garcia said he told police his daughter had purchased the vouchers from a “Mexican man” because his daughter had purchased different vouchers from an Oil Stop employee who happened to be Mexican.
Asked why the manager of Oil Stop had given police his license plate number as one of the vehicles for which one of the counterfeit vouchers had been used to pay for a car wash, Garcia said that part of the police report isn’t true.
Garcia said he has paid for car washes at Oil Stop with his own money and never noticed employees recording his plate number.
However, the Oil Stop manager told a reporter last week that the business routinely records license plate numbers for marketing purposes and that he had checked a log to determine plate numbers of vehicles for which counterfeit vouchers had been used to pay for car washes. He said one of those four vehicles was a 2005 Dodge registered to Oliver Garcia.
When asked how he thinks police connected his plate number to the case, Garcia said, “I saw a police officer go by real slow in front of my house. They took the license plate number from my van. They passed by here, and that is where they got the license plate number from.”
Garcia said police also told him when they interviewed him that they had already spoken to his daughter, but when he called her afterward to ask her why she hadn’t mentioned it to him, she told him the police hadn’t contacted her.
Santa Fe Police Department spokesmen didn’t return messages left late Monday afternoon seeking comment.
The fraud charges against Garcia are pending in state District Court. Garcia’s attorney, Dan Marlowe, waived Garcia’s arraignment, and Garcia hasn’t entered a plea in the case. A pretrial conference is scheduled May 31, days before the June 5 primary election in which Garcia’s name will appear on the Democratic Party ballot, along with that of treasurer candidate Patrick Varela. No Republican is running for the office.
Santa Fe County Democratic Party Chairman Richard Ellenberg has publicly asked Garcia to drop out of the race. However, Garcia said Monday that he won’t do that.
“Why should I drop out if I’m not guilty?” Garcia asked. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m still on the ballot. I’m still running and I want people to know that.”
According to online records, Garcia filed a report with the Secretary of State’s Office on April 9 saying he had collected no campaign contributions and had no expenditures during the first reporting period, which began in October.
But in his second campaign finance report, filed Monday, Garcia stated that he gave a $3,000 loan to his campaign and spent $2,615. Most of the reported spending — $1,859 — went to an Albuquerque printing company.
Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.