California councilman sentenced to 18 months for burying bribes in backyard

For more than two decades, Ricardo Pacheco held a seat of public trust in Baldwin Park, California — and for a significant portion of that time, he appears to have treated that seat as a private marketplace. Sentenced this week to eighteen months in federal prison, the 63-year-old former councilman joins a long lineage of local officials who mistook proximity to power for immunity from accountability. What the FBI found buried in his backyard — nearly $63,000 in cash — stands as a quiet, damning symbol of what happens when civic office becomes a vehicle for private accumulation rather than pub