Nation’s Leading Potato Grower Indicted For Political Money Laundering
One of the nation’s largest potato growers has been indicted by a Riverside County Criminal grand jury on charges of laundering campaign contributions, county prosecutors announced on Tuesday.
James Larry Minor, 70, of San Jacinto in Riverside County, was arraigned Wednesday morning on claims he violated California’s Political Reform Act by donating money in the name of another person, which was an act of perjury, and filed a false document.
Minor is owner of Agri-Empire Corp. in San Jacinto, Calif., which ships millions of potatoes to fast food restaurants, family kitchens, supermarkets and brokers across the nation. Its predecessor, San Jacinto Packing Company, was founded by the Minor family in 1943 with an $800 loan.
Revealed in the indictment, Minor was charged with illegally donating nearly $40,000 in the names of family members, including his sons, daughter, son-in-law and daughters-in-law, friends, and business associates. Those contributions were made to the Jeff Stone for State Senate Campaign in 2009.
The contribution limit was $3,900 in 2009, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
On Tuesday, with virtually all of his colleagues opposed to it, Stone, a Riverside County Supervisor. abandoned a proposal to limit the amount of money that could be directly contributed to candidates seeking county office.
Stone was seeking to completely prohibit corporations from making donations and — for the first time in the county’s history — cap how much supervisors and those seeking the offices of treasurer-tax collector, auditor- controller, assessor-clerk-recorder, district attorney, sheriff and county judge could receive in a campaign cycle.
“This is to level the playing field so that someone going into the political arena can have a platform and offer a true challenge,” Stone said of his proposed ordinance, titled “Campaign Limit Enactment And Necessary Updating Procedures” — or CLEANUP.
He recommended the following campaign contribution limits:
— $5,000 per calendar year from any one source to a county supervisor; and
— $10,000 per calendar year from any one source to a candidate for judge, treasurer-tax collector, auditor-controller, assessor-clerk-recorder, district attorney and sheriff.
The supervisor was advocating fines and possible forfeiture of office for violators.
The proposal failed.
Minor was also accused of perjury and filing a false statement in connection with his donations to the Committee to Elect Brenda Salas for State Assembly Campaign in 2006.
The limit that year was $3,300, and Minor contributed a total of $26,400 in the names of others. Minor illegally filed a major donor statement with the Fair Political Practices Commission under penalty of perjury that failed to list any of those donations to Salas.
Minor faces a maximum sentence of four years and eight months in state prison, and a fine of $60,000 imposed by the FPPC.
The money laundering investigation was conducted by the Attorney General’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence.
