Former Compton City Councilman Isaac Galvan pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal criminal charges for bribing a Baldwin Park alderman who he paid $70,000 in exchange for a marijuana license from the city.
Galvin, who ran a consulting service, was involved in a scheme in which he assisted one of Galvin’s clients in paying a bribe to Assemblyman Ricardo Pacheco, who wanted to obtain a marijuana license in Baldwin Park.
Galvin, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and one count of tax evasion for failing to report income of more than $500,000.
He served on the Compton City Council from 2013 to 2022 before losing his seat amid a vote-rigging scandal and being accused of election fraud.
In 2017, Baldwin Park began allowing the cultivation, manufacturing and distribution of marijuana within its city limits. Court documents show that then-City Councilor Pacheco solicited bribes from businesses seeking marijuana development agreements and related licenses from the city.
In exchange for the illegal payments, Pacheco, who served as a council member in 2020, agreed to use his position to get a company’s marijuana license approved, documents say.
Galvan represents W&F International Corp., an import-export company based in Diamond Bar, in hopes of obtaining a marijuana license for W&F in Baldwin Park.
According to the plea agreement, Galvan assisted Yichang Bai, 52, of Acadia, the owner and operator of W&F, in paying a $70,000 bribe to Pacheco. Bai has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing him of helping orchestrate the bribery scheme, and his case is set to go to trial in February.
Galvan paid bribes in exchange for Pacheco’s political support and the councilman’s promise to get Baldwin Park to approve W&F’s marijuana license. Pacheco later spoke out, voting in favor of the company’s marijuana license in June and July 2018, and later that year voting in favor of W&F’s proposal to move its operations to the city.
Prosecutors allege that Galvan and Bai took steps to conceal the illegal payments they made to Pacheco and conceal Bai and W&F’s relationship to those payments. According to the plea agreement, Bai collected checks from third parties who owed him money and then, at Galvin’s direction, delivered the checks to Galvin with a blank payee action. Galvan then gave the check to Pacheco, who arranged for him or a third party to cash it, court records show.
Shortly after the vote to authorize W&F’s relocation, Pacheco contacted Galvin to ask him to get more money from W&F for Pacheco’s legal defense fund. Galvan told Bai that Pacheco wanted to raise $25,000 for his fundraiser, but Bai insisted on paying $20,000, according to the plea agreement.
Court documents say Bai provided a total of seven checks from different bank accounts that were not Bai’s or W&F’s. Galvan arranged for the check to be delivered to Pacheco as further payment in exchange for his vote and support for the W&F marijuana license.
Galvin admitted in his plea agreement that he failed to file federal personal tax returns from 2017 to 2020 in various ways to evade assessment of the federal taxes he owed. Galvan failed to report $560,525 in income for tax years 2017 through 2020, resulting in a total loss to the U.S. Treasury of $115,816. He agreed to pay $323,557 in restitution to the IRS.
U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II has scheduled a sentencing hearing for June 8, 2026. Galvin faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison on the bribery charge and up to five years in prison on the tax charge.
In June 2020, Pacheco pleaded guilty to one count of bribery after an FBI sting in which he was paid nearly $38,000 by an undercover Baldwin Park police officer in exchange for the councilman’s political support for the police union’s contract with the city.
As part of his plea agreement, Pacheco agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation into the bribery scheme.
Galvan won his last Compton City Council election by one vote, but four votes cast for him were disqualified after a judge found the ballots were submitted by people who did not live in the disputed council district.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Galvin and six others with conspiring to commit election fraud.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, Galvan conspired with primary opponent Jace Dawson to get voters who lived outside of the Assembly district to vote for Galvan.
