Update: Brea Councilman Steve Vargas Returns Money Stolen from Veteran’s Charity — to the WRONG PEOPLE!

By
Greg Diamond
– April 13, 2015Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice

The Vargas income redistribution plan: aim for 3A; end up with 3B. (Remember those days before whiteboards but after blackboards, when the chalk was light yellow and the boards were dark green? OJB still likes the motif!)

 

When we last checked into Brea politics in late February, we broke the story on Brea Councilman Steve Vargas’s involvement in stealing $1570 in donations intended for the Brea Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5384. Instead of handing over 14 donation checks clearly written out to “Brea VFW Post 5384” to the Brea VFW commander, Vargas ordered the checks be deposited into the account of the North Orange County Veterans Club, of which he is Executive Director. (You might be thinking: “How did the bank teller allow that to happen?”  Indeed.  That supposedly has been dealt with.)

Since our last post on this topic, Councilman Vargas, a Naval Reservist, offered to settle the claim with the VFW Post by giving them half the money.  That’s right — half.  That’s like saying, “I stole your bike but I only need it for school days, so you can have it on weekends and during the summer.”  The VFW declined Vargas’s offer and again demanded the unconditional return of all of their money.

Now Vargas has figured out a way to make matters even worse for himself.  He returned the money — but NOT to the VFW Post for which it was intended!  Instead, he returned the money to the people that donated the money in the first place!  This action was apparently based on the legal principle of “I wanted that, and if I can’t have it, then you can’t have it either.”  (I’m not sure how to say that in Latin.)

Unfortunately for Vargas, that is not an actual legal principle.  The actual legal principle can be illustrated in this very simple analogy:  Let’s say you own a Honda Civic that has a loan on it through Honda Motor Credit.  Vargas takes your Honda and drives if for over four months.  Then, he hands the keys and the car over to Honda Motor Credit – along with title – and says to you, “Sorry for the misunderstanding.  If you want your car back, deal with Honda Motor Credit.”

To put it another way, the score looks like this — and like many legal commenters I’ll make it easy by giving all of the parties convenient initials:

Step 1: Donors (“D”) gave Charity (“C”)  $1570.  Donors are then at -$1570 (although their hearts are full) and Charity is at +$1570 .  What was supposed to happen was that Charity was to give that money to needy veterans, or Beneficiaries (“B”).  So that would leave Charity at $0 and Beneficiaries at +$1570.

Step 2: Instead, Vargas — whom, since we’ve already used B, C, and D, we might as well call an “A” — managed to put himself up +$1570, with B and C now both at $0.

Step 3: Now Vargas, the A, gives the money back to “D,” the Donors.  Now everyone is at $0.  But that’s not how the law works!  First, you can’t steal something and then give it back and say that everything’s back to like nothing happened.  Second, the problem is that C had the reasonable expectation that it would be up +$1570 (based on, well, the fact that the checks were made out in it’s name, for it to cash, so it could give those funds to B).

Step 4: Vargas still owes C $1570 to put them back to where they would be if the A hadn’t stolen it for his own group’s use.  But, the members of group D — whom Vargas restored back to $0 — do not have to give up the money.  Indeed, they may be pretty unhappy at having been dragged into someone else’s scheme, and may no longer want the money to go to C.  They might just want the whole thing to go away by now.

Step 5: That means that Vargas, the A, now owes Charity C that $1570 personally.

What should Vargas do in such a situation?  First, stop being an “A.”  Second, contact his own lawyer — ideally one who can explain to him the concept of “punitive damages.”

Brea residents, meanwhile, can wonder whether Vargas applies these same finely honed reasoning and problem solving skills to the decisions he makes as their representative. In fact, he’ll have another chance to show what he thinks about diversion of others’ funds to benefit oneself at this week’s Special Brea Council Meeting coming up on April 15 at 6pm, about which we’ll be writing more very soon.

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)