San Diego’s soon-to-be former District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has been ordered to return “more than $100,000,” to a San Diego businessman and his family, after the DA’s office took the money and held it for over 15 months without making any moves to charge him. The San Diego Tribune is reporting that Superior Court Judge Tamila E. Ipema ordered the return of the monies on Friday. Why did DA Dumanis have the money in the first place? It’s because San Diego businessman James Slatic ran a medical marijuana business.
“Investigations have been ongoing since January 2016 and there is no indication … that criminal charges are going to be filed in this case in the near future,” the judge wrote. [...]
Steve Walker, a spokesman for Dumanis, said the office is considering an appeal of the ruling, among other options.
“The investigation remains under review for potential criminal charges, therefore the District Attorney’s Office is not able to discuss the facts, the status of that review or any evidence related to it,” Walker said via email. “The funds ordered returned by a civil judge last week were previously found by a criminal judge to be tainted by criminal conduct, and we are reviewing the court transcript from the … hearing in March to explore further options.”
Slatic says he ran a business with 35 employees—which included a retirement program—for two years. In January of last year that all changed when his business was busted into by drug agents.
The agents seized all of the inventory, business records and just over $324,000 in cash. A separate forfeiture proceeding for those funds is ongoing. The agents also arrested two employees inside the building at the time, although no criminal charges have been filed.
A few days later, Dumanis’ office sought to freeze Slatic’s personal bank account — and those of his wife and two stepdaughters — alleging that the money was illegal drug profits. The money taken was $55,000 from Slatic’s account, $34,000 from his wife’s account and more than $5,000 each from the couple’s two daughters. It was formally seized a few months later.
According to the LA Times, Dumanis’s office argued that they had 12 months from the actual forfeiture of the money in June, to file charges. Republican Dumanis will be leaving her post as DA, with interest in possibly running for a Board of Supervisors gig, in July. She made this announcement last month, saying she wanted to think about what she was going to do next and wanted to step down so that the DA’s office could move forward with their important work. But Dumanis’s further political ambitions, and her decision to leave the DA’s office probably has less to do with her work taking money from citizens using civil asset forfeiture laws. The San Diego Union Tribune explains, Dumanis has bigger fish to fry—or not be fried by.
It also came amid reports this week of federal court filings in the long-running political corruption case against Mexican businessman José Susumo Azano Matsura, which continues to dog Dumanis, who testified at the trial.
Azano was convicted of illegally contributing almost $600,000 to the 2012 mayoral campaigns of Dumanis and Rep. Bob Filner, as well as committees for county and congressional Democrats and the campaign of Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego.
Then-U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy, now a San Diego Superior Court judge, had recused herself from the case. Azano’s lawyers have now revealed that Dumanis and Duffy communicated just before Azano’s trial last summer and during it.
Democrats in San Diego have called on the Board of Supervisors to appoint a special investigator to look into Dumanis’s role in this corruption scandal. I guess it’s just a coincidence that she was thinking of running for the Board of Supervisors.