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Once the grand jury got together, it didn't take long for Larry Minor to fold.
Less than 24 hours after his indictment last month, the Southern California agribusiness mogul pleaded guilty to charges that he funneled money through friends and family to circumvent the state's campaign contribution limits.
In the routine machinations of money and politics, the scheme was nothing new. The act of routing campaign cash through friends, family, third-party organizations and even political parties is a time-honored tradition in politics.
Although they are frequently updated and differ based on the race, California's contribution limits typically allow individual donors to give no more than a few thousand dollars to a given candidate for each primary and general election. But by employing some creative money-shuffling tactics, a number of donors have found ways to give much more.
In 2009 in Riverside, local auto dealer Mark Leggio pleaded guilty to a scheme in which employees of his dealership gave money to political candidates with the understanding that they would be reimbursed by Leggio. The arrangement allowed Leggio to funnel upwards of $50,000 to local candidates.
Two Florida business owners agreed to pay ethics fines in 2009 for using similar tactics to route $36,000 to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign in 2005. According to the LA Times, they had been hoping to win a lucrative concessions contract at the Los Angeles International Airport.
Also in 2009, then-Assemblyman Joel Anderson, a San Diego Republican, reached a settlement with the Fair Political Practices Commission after it was revealed that he used county political parties to circumvent limits on money transfers between an old campaign account and a new one.
As we reported last year, that type of arrangement was not particularly unusual either – though regulators often acknowledge that true coordination is difficult to prove.
For his part, Minor pleaded guilty to donating more than $66,000 in the names of family members and employees to two state legislative candidates: Jeff Stone in 2009 and Brenda Salas in 2006. Both candidates lost and neither knew about the money, according to prosecutors.
At one point during the grand jury proceedings, Minor's daughter-in-law told prosecutors that "Larry explained to me that you can only give so much to a campaign. So we wrote the checks, and he would reimburse us."
Minor made his fortune as the head of San Jacinto-based Agri-Empire Corp., one of the nation's largest potato growers. As the Washington Post pointed out, he has acquired a reputation over the years for throwing his money around. Among other things, he is a hall-of-fame off-road racer and at one point maintained a private zoo that housed, among other things, a herd of zebras.
In pleading guilty, Minor agreed to pay $60,000 in fines to the Fair Political Practices Commission and is barred from giving campaign contributions for three years.
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