Attorney who stole nearly $155,000 from Mercedes avoids prison

McALLEN, TEXAS (ValleyCentral) — Former Mercedes City Attorney Juan R. Molina, who misappropriated nearly $155,000 in taxpayer money, will not spend a single day in federal prison.

During a hearing on Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa placed Molina on supervised release for a year and fined him $5,000.

“I accept responsibility, obviously,” Molina said. “It’s regrettable and beyond disappointing, the situation I find myself in. And, obviously, this is not where I imagined I would be.”

Molina represented Mercedes for more than a decade.

“The past fourteen years have been very rewarding,” Molina wrote in his resignation letter, “and it brought me great pleasure to assist and legally represent the City of Mercedes.”

After he resigned, however, questions surfaced about how Molina had managed city money.

The city sued Molina, accusing him of fraud, negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.

Anthony Troiani, an attorney who represents the city, also filed a complaint against Molina with the State Bar of Texas. After reviewing the complaint, the State Bar concluded that Molina “failed to keep money owed to the City of Mercedes in a trust account” separate from his personal account.

Molina also failed to “timely disburse money to the City of Mercedes,” according to a judgment published by the State Bar in January 2021, and “failed to promptly provide a full accounting to the City of Mercedes.”

Four months later, a federal grand jury charged Molina with theft.

Molina pleaded guilty in March 2023. During the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Guerra said Mercedes had conducted an internal audit.

The audit revealed that Molina received more than $77,000 from the city and more than $77,000 from an economic development organization affiliated with the city in May 2017.

They transferred the money for a “prospective City of Mercedes business development,” Guerra said during the hearing, according to a transcript.

Molina didn’t use the money for the prospective business development.

“An FBI investigation into Mr. Molina’s accounts discovered that instead of holding the funds in trust as required by the IOLTA account, that Mr. Molina had used these funds for personal non-authorized activities,” Guerra said, according to the transcript.

IOLTA is an acronym for “Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts,” a type of account lawyers use to hold funds that belong to clients.

Agents questioned Molina about the missing money.

“He admitted that he should not have used the client funds for personal expenses, but that he was having financial issues,” Guerra said, according to the transcript.

Molina returned to court Thursday for sentencing.

His attorney, Juan E. Gonzalez of Weslaco, said that Molina returned the money to Mercedes years ago.

“Every single penny has been returned,” Gonzalez said.

Hinojosa, the federal judge, appeared confused and questioned why the court had accepted Molina’s plea if he’d already returned the money.

“He spent it and then repaid the same amount,” Guerra said.

Hinojosa appeared to accept that answer.

Molina also cooperated with the government after the FBI approached him.

While prosecutors didn’t file a motion to reduce his sentence, Gonzalez said he wanted the court to understand what Molina had attempted to do.

After a private discussion at the bench, Hinojosa placed Molina on supervised release for a year and fined him $5,000.

“You now have a felony conviction,” Hinojosa said.