Rebecca Vigil-Giron
Indicted consultant had his own contract with the secretary of state while also receiving allegedly illegal payments through another contractor
Joseph Kupfer, one of four people indicted in the case involving former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, was working during the time of the alleged crimes as a consultant in Vigil-Giron’s office, documents show.
He was paid tens of thousands of dollars to advise Vigil-Giron on the use of federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds to ensure disabled people could vote in the 2004 and 2006 elections, according to documents obtained from the Secretary of State’s Office through a records request.
At the same time, Kupfer was working as a subcontractor for another defendant in the case, media consultant Armando Gutierrez, according to Gutierrez’s attorney. Gutierrez had a multi-million dollar contract with Vigil-Giron’s office to produce TV ads paid for with HAVA funds, and Gutierrez’s attorney says that’s what Kupfer helped him with.
Kupfer was paid $750,000 by Gutierrez during that time. Prosecutors allege that was part of the illegal scheme, while Gutierrez’s attorney says it was payment for valid work.
At the same time Kupfer was receiving those payments from Gutierrez, he was being paid tens of thousands of dollars by Vigil-Giron for separate but related consulting work.
Vigil-Giron, Gutierrez, Kupfer and Kupfer’s wife Elizabeth each face 50 counts including money laundering, fraud, soliciting or receiving kickbacks and tax evasion. They’re accused of bilking taxpayers out of millions of dollars between 2004 and 2006 through the secretary of state’s contract with Gutierrez by falsifying invoices.
The grand jury indictments in the case don’t connect all the dots about how the defendants knew each other, so documents that show Kupfer’s relationship with Vigil-Giron’s office are significant.
Vigil-Giron was directly involved in Kupfer’s contract
Vigil-Giron’s office paid Kupfer just over $66,000 between 2004 and 2006, according to invoices and payment vouchers obtained through the records request.
The documents reveal that Vigil-Giron was directly involved in Kupfer’s contract with her office. She personally signed contracts with Kupfer in 2003, 2004 and 2005. And Vigil-Giron signed off on two invoices Kupfer submitted to her office.
On one of them the former secretary of state wrote that the invoice should be paid with “HAVA funds.”
Perhaps the most noteworthy documents obtained through the records request were two invoices Kupfer submitted, one for $5,000 and another for $10,000. Though the invoices aren’t dated, vouchers that processed those payments are dated Aug. 17, 2004.
There was no contract between Kupfer and Vigil-Giron’s office in effect at that time, according to the records provided by the Secretary of State’s Office.
Vigil-Giron’s attorney, Robert Gorence, said he had no comment. Attorneys for Kupfer and Gutierrez have not returned calls seeking comment.
Whether Kupfer did work for the Secretary of State’s Office before 2003 isn’t clear. Current Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo wrote in a response to the records request that the office doesn’t maintain records for more than three years after the end of the fiscal year in which they were created.
A prior version of this article incorrectly spelled Joseph Kupfer’s last name as Kuper in one paragraph.