Sinaloa cartel bribes Arizona officials, funds election fraud, says investigator

A forensic investigator Thursday alleged that Arizona officials have been deeply corrupted by the Sinaloa drug cartel, which has also tampered with the state’s elections.

Jacqueline Breger, an insurance agent and forensic investigator who works with the Harris/Thaler Law Corporation, testified at an Arizona Senate Elections and Municipal Oversight & Elections Joint Committee hearing on Thursday that she found many cases of bribery and election fraud during her investigation and has linked them to the Sinaloa cartel.

The cartel uses several money laundering schemes, one of which involves forging fake deeds of trust for private family residences in midwestern states like Illinois. These deeds are accompanied by fake mortgages, which are really cartel earnings from narcotic sales and other illegal activities. Many of the title companies listed on the deeds are fake, and many of the notarizations forged.

The money is then funneled to several officials in Arizona, allegedly including Governor Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Sen. Krysten Sinema, Rep. Ruben Gallego, Mesa Mayor John Giles, Arizona Speaker of the House Ben Toma, as well as Maricopa County Supervisors Bill Gates, Thomas Galvin, and Clint Hickman, more than two dozen judges on the Maricopa County Superior Court, at least two Mesa City judges, at least one judge in the town of Gilbert, Mesa Mayor John Giles, five members of Mesa City Council, and several police officers.

"In the Superior Courts for Maricopa County, Pinal County and Pima County, at least 25 percent of the active judges have accepted bribes in exchange for protecting the racketeering activities," Breger said.

The Sinaloa cartel uses a mother-daughter team, Dawna and Brittney Chavez, as its agents to create the deeds of trust and facilitate the “racketeering enterprises”. 

Berger said she and Thaler’s team found nine deeds of trust in Governor Katie Hobbs’ name, many of which contained forged signatures and nonexistent title companies. Six of them were purchased between 2001 and 2005 while Hobbs was at Emerge Arizona, a training program for Democrat women who want to run for office.

“If one were to guess—and this is just a guess on our part—Emerge Arizona seems to have been formed as a medium to attract women interested in politics and bribe them through the proper scheme to adopt positions of power and to further the goals and objectives of the cartel,” Breger told the elections committee.

Hobbs was the winner of last year’s gubernatorial election which was heavily contested after half the county’s tabulation machines or printers in Arizona’s Maricopa County voting centers malfunctioned, predominantly in Republican areas. Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake reported she was forced to vote in a liberal area so she would be assured of a functioning tabulation machine.   

Breger shared that in October 2020, shortly before the general election, Thaler was provided evidence that the Maricopa County computer database had been designed with various backdoor entry points, allowing outsiders to infiltrate it and to change the data, including removing documents and uploading forged documents.

During those elections, voting machines in 70 precincts experienced changes to their printer settings despite being tested the night before. Those changes were found to be made via computer infiltration.

Breger says she and Thaler have eyewitness testimony that Brittney Chavez was seen accessing the database.

In October 2020, an investigator on the team found over 100,000 filled-in ballots and over $13 million in a case in two unmarked rental vans, which were driven to the office of Robert Runbeck, who runs Runbeck Election Services and handles the state’s mail-in ballots.

Breger also noted that one of the inconsistencies in the 2020 election was when Democrat Adrian Fontes lost to Republican Stephen Richer by 6,000 votes, which was a statistical improbability. The investigator said it was a setup for the 2022 election.

"Richer won by approximately 6,000 votes," said Breger during the committee hearing. "This means that 50,000 individuals who voted for the Democratic ticket across the board had to choose the Republican candidate for Recorder against an incumbent who never suffered in a scandal. . .This is a planned loss. Hobbs would receive the Democratic nomination for governor and Fontes would run for secretary of state to replace Hobbs."

County database systems have been used to change vote totals since 2017, alleged Breger, who said that Brittney Chavez also creates political action committees (PACs) to launder money for the cartel’s preferred candidates.

Thaler would have come to testify in Breger’s place, but six attempts have been made on his life so far. In one attempt, Thaler lost control of his car after his tire was slashed with such precision that the tire did not deflate at once but slowly leaked air as he drove. 

Breger said the same thing happened to Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s daughter during the campaign.

A copy of the investigator’s report, along with evidence, was provided to the committee members. It had also been submitted to former Governor Doug Ducey, the FBI and other officials, but it is unknown if and what action has been taken.

As of Sunday, #ArrestKatieHobbs went viral on Twitter with over 100,000 tweets, along with the hashtag #CartelKatie.

Frontline News reported in December that according to leaked confidential documents, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer worked closely with the Biden administration to enlist the help of mainstream media and social media platforms to censor “election misinformation”. Katie Hobbs also requested Twitter’s help in censoring content.

Richer and Supervisor Chairman Bill Gates also created a PAC called Pro Democracy Republicans of Arizona dedicated to keeping Trump-backed Republicans such as Kari Lake out of office.