When disgraced former Stockton California Mayor Anthony Silva isn’t being arrested for playing strip poker with underage kids at a summer camp he helped host, he’s being arrested upon arriving at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).
A younger, equally corrupt Silva
Moments after returning from a vacation in Colombia, former Stockton Mayor Anthony Silva was arrested Sunday at San Francisco International Airport on suspicion of mishandling money when he ran a youth organization more than two years ago.
Silva, 42, was transported to the San Joaquin County Jail, where he was held in lieu of $1 million bail.
The charges include grand theft, embezzlement, profiteering, misappropriation of public funds and money laundering. The organization he’s being charged with defrauding is the Stockton Kids Club, of which he was the CEO. The reason it was named that was that the Stockton Boys & Girls Club’s charter was kicked out of the Boys & Girls Club of America a few years ago. This is the same group that ran the summer camp where Silva was recorded and subsequently arrested for all kinds of misdeeds with underage kids.
Silva is accused of using his cellphone to make an audio recording of conversation among several young people, including a 16-year-old boy, who were playing strip poker with the mayor inside his cabin at the camp.
Prosecutors said in a media statement it was evident that the participants, who were naked, were recorded against their will. Amador County District Attorney Todd Riebe said those present besides the mayor included two to three females and three males, all ranging in age from 18 to 20.
As with the previous charges, Silva and his attorney’s defense is that there is a witch hunt going to in retaliation against the “populist” Republican. Sound familiar?
The former mayor was scheduled to have a hearing in that case this Tuesday, after Silva’s rejection of a settlement agreement in November that would have closed the case.
Last year, Silva, a first-time mayor, lost his re-election bid by more than 40 percentage points to Michael Tubbs, a 26-year-old Democrat. Silva, a populist Republican, was elected in an upset in 2012, the year Stockton filed for bankruptcy and struggled to rein in a sky-high homicide rate.
I feel like I’ve heard this story before, but with more orange hair and tinier hands.
