Stockton Tax Payers Charged $44,000 to Investigate Brando Villapudua
Stockton City Attorney Lori Asuncion refuses to disclose nature of a secretive Villapudua Investigation.
STOCKTON- Since January 30, 2024, 209 Times has been repeatedly demanding the results and cost of a city paid investigation involving Stockton City Councilmember Brando Villapudua’s alleged criminal activity.
Finally, under increased threats of litigation, Stockton City Attorney Lori M Asunción (State Bar #238240) and Stockton Assistant Attorney Taryn Nicole Jones (State Bar #311219) reluctantly provided 209 Times six invoices from Oppenheimer Investigations Group of Berkeley, California that total $44,443.50.
The invoices are merely titled “workplace investigations” and offer no details other than the highly secretive taxpayer funded investigation involving Villapudua’s alleged illicit activities appears to have been initiated on April 21, 2023 and concluded on September 30, 2023.
The City Attorney’s office repeatedly refuse to provide any further details to the public regarding the nature or outcome of the taxpayer funded investigation, citing “attorney-client privileges”.
Villapudua has an extensive criminal history which includes being convicted for multiple driving under the influence offenses, pleading guilty to a home invasion of an elderly disabled woman, and being accused of ejaculating on the back of a child under the age of ten years old while he lived in Lodi with his parents.
In 2011, Villapudua’s brother, former San Joaquin County Supervisor Carlos Villapuda, told Lodi Police detectives that the child molestation allegations being made by a minor against his brother were were motivated by a desire to “affect his campaign”, even though he was never mentioned and it was kept private.
To counter the allegations made in the recently unveiled Lodi Police report, Villapudua posted a document on social media from the Stockton (not Lodi) Police Department stating there was “no record of sex crime w|juvenile in SPD database.”
Council member Villapuda has refused to respond to 209 Times’ repeated requests for an interview. #stockton