But when it comes to the most corrupt counties, few if any can top the recent run that Los Angeles County is on — specifically, the cities and agencies in south and central L.A. County.

The latest example came last week when Luis Aguinaga resigned as mayor of South El Monte after admitting to taking bribes for seven years from a contractor paid by the city for engineering and construction services.

A Nexis search of stories by the Southern California News Group, the Los Angeles Times and Southern California Public Radio shows Aguinaga has plenty of corrupt company in neighboring communities.

Bell

In 2010, a  Los Angeles Times investigation found that the city was being run like a criminal enterprise to the benefit of city officials and City Council members who received huge salaries and relied on illegal taxes and deceptive accounting. Former City Manager Robert Rizzo was found guilty of 69 corruption charges. Five City Council members also were convicted over city schemes.

Carson

Mayor Al Robles is now under siege from Los Angeles County prosecutors for simultaneously serving on the board of the Water Replenishment District of Southern California and as Carson mayor. He faced a county grand jury rebuke over the water board’s move to pay his legal bills. He has also faced years of campaign finance allegations over his water board and Carson election campaigns.

Central Basin Municipal Water District

Political and legal fallout continues from a scandal involving an alleged $2.75 million slush fund created by the district to pay politically connected consultants such as former Assemblyman Tom Calderon, D-Montebello. Central Basin board member Art Chacon was allowed to collect car allowance and mileage reimbursements from the district from 2006 to 2014, an eight-year span in which he didn’t have a driver’s license. To avoid a potentially huge payout at trial, in 2014, the district settled sexual harassment allegations made by a female contractor against district Director Robert Apodaca for $670,000.

City of Commerce

In 2012, Councilman Robert Fierro resigned after he pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge related to his attempts to dupe investigators looking into the financing of his 2005 campaign. In 2010, Councilman Hugo Argumedo resigned after he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. Argumedo concocted evidence to help an attorney sue his city for allegedly unpaid legal fees.

Cudahy

In 2012, City Manager Angel Perales, Mayor David Silva and Councilman Osvaldo Conde were arrested by the FBI after being caught seeking bribes from the owner of a marijuana dispensary. In 2014, then-state Controller John Chiang released a scathing report about city finances that found city credit cards were used improperly for meals, travel and entertainment; pay raises were awarded without explanation or justification; and that employees regularly received paid leave that they were not entitled to get.

Lynwood

In 2012, former City Council members Louis Byrd and Fernando Pedroza were convicted of illegally boosting their pay — by $330,000 and $160,000, respectively — by taking stipends for working on city commissions without any responsibilities, a crime with parallels to what happened in Bell. There were also reports that city officials used city credit cards to pay for entertainment, including “a $1,500 night out at a Guadalajara strip club, where dancers allegedly performed sexual favors” for two city officials, the Los Angeles Times reported. In 2007, Mayor Paul H. Richards II received a 16-year sentence for a long-running embezzlement scheme.

Maywood

County prosecutors are now investigating alleged illegal collusion to get around state open-government laws that may be related to questionable zoning changes made without proper scrutiny. There are also reports that the FBI is investigating possible bribery in the awarding of city contracts.

Montebello

In 2011, state Controller John Chiang issued a report showing that officials had improperly spent more than $31 million, helping prompt a city budget crisis. Redevelopment funds were used for many non-government purposes, including meals in Las Vegas.

South Gate

Former city councilman, city manager, mayor and treasurer Albert Robles was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in 2005 for public corruption, money laundering and bribery. Though several of the convictions were thrown out in 2013, Robles’ sentence was not reduced because of the seriousness of the bribery counts that remained.

Vernon

The tax-rich industrial city which long controlled who voted in the city by controlling who stayed in its very limited housing was nearly disbanded by the Legislature in 2011 after Donal O’Callaghan became the third city administrator since 2006 to face criminal charges. Mayor Leonis Malburg and his wife Dominica were convicted of voter fraud and conspiracy in 2009. The Malburgs lied for years about living in Vernon while actually residing at a Hancock Park mansion.

“What do we get out of this? What do our residents get?” he asked before voting against the higher fees. Two others joined him, defeating the measure.

 

The next day, Amezquita’s phone rang with a call from a lobbyist working with Jimmy Sandhu and Sukhbir Singh, the owners of H.P. Tow. She asked him to lunch.

 

It was just the move FBI agents had hoped the men would make. When Amezquita sat down with Singh and the lobbyist at a restaurant days later, he was wired with recording equipment that secretly captured the conversation. Federal agents hid nearby.

 

The August 2013 encounter was the first of several meals, phone calls and tow yard meetings with Singh and Sandhu that Amezquita recorded as an informant for the FBI and which now are at the center of a federal bribery case against the men, court records show. Since their arrest and an initial court appearance in October 2015, Singh, 39, and Sandhu, 37, have been free on bond and have not been formally indicted by a grand jury on criminal charges.

This continues the trend first launched with the Times’ 2010 discovery that Bell was being looted by its top officials. This led to investigations of neighboring cities in southeast Los Angeles County with similar characteristics — low-turnout elections, apathetic electorates, few civic watchdogs, and cliques of elected leaders and department heads working behind the scenes to enrich themselves.

Dishonor list includes Cudahy, Vernon, South Gate, Lynwood

Southern California Public Radio looked at this phenomenon in 2014:

The indictments of state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, and his brother Tom Calderon are just the latest in a string of bribery, money laundering and corruption cases to hit the area bordered by the 110 and 710 freeways to the west and east, and by the 10 and 105 freeways to the north and south. …

 

Cudahy: Three former city officials – Osvaldo Conde, David Silva and Angel Perales – pleaded guilty in a federal extortion and bribery case. They admitted to accepting $17,000 in bribes from an FBI informant who purportedly wanted to open a medical marijuana clinic in town. Documents in that case outlined rampant corruption in Cudahy. Conde was sentenced to three years in prison. Silva was given one year in prison. Perales was placed on five years’ probation.

 

Vernon: The city’s mayor, Leonis Malburg, and his wife Dominica were charged with voter fraud and conspiracy in 2006. They were found guilty in 2009; Leonis was given five years’ probation and ordered to pay $579,000 in fines and restitution, while Dominica was placed on three years’ probation and ordered to pay nearly $40,000.

 

South Gate: Over the years, Al Robles served as a South Gate councilman, mayor, treasurer and deputy city manager. He went on to be a member of the Central Basin Municipal Water District. In 2005, he was convicted of corruption and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. In 2013, a federal appeals court threw out Robles’ convictions on public corruption and money laundering. The bribery counts remained; Robles is scheduled to be released from prison in 2015.

 

Lynwood: Two former city councilmen were convicted of misappropriating funds. Prosecutors say they received stipends for sitting on city commissions that didn’t do any work. Louis Byrd was sentenced to five years in state prison while Fernando Pedroza was given four. Politicians also used city-issued credit cards for concerts, golf tickets and sexual favors at a Mexican strip club.

Towing company profited off undocumented immigrants

An interesting aspect of the Times’ story about the Huntington Park scandal was that it showed the towing company targeted undocumented immigrants with its excessive fees — and were bitter about efforts to protect these individuals:

For decades, H.P. Tow, registered officially as H.P. Automotive and Tow Service Inc., has contracted with Huntington Park, city officials said.  …

 

Such city contracts traditionally have been coveted by tow companies as they often provide a steady flow of business and allow tow companies to charge the city and car owners an array of fees, including the daily storage fees while owners try to get their vehicles released from police custody.

 

In recent years, however, tow operators have been squeezed by local and state laws that restrict when police can impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers. The new regulations, which were enacted primarily to ease hardships experienced by immigrants living in the country illegally, have undercut significantly the number of vehicles impounded by police.