Another former journalist charged in Sunland Park case

Jose ‘Pepe’ Reyes allegedly set up and recorded the lap dance given to Sunland Park mayoral candidate Gerardo Hernandez and threatened to release the video publicly if Hernandez didn’t quit the race.

Read the criminal complaint against Reyes here.

Police have issued an arrest warrant for a former journalist they allege filmed the video of Sunland Park mayoral candidate Gerardo Hernandez getting a lap dance and carried out the extortion threat to try to get Hernandez to quit the race.

Jose Margarito Ramirez Reyes, who court records state more commonly goes by Jose “Pepe” Reyes, faces fourth-degree felony charges of extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion. His bond has been set at $50,000 cash-only, but he has not been arrested.

The former freelance reporter and investigative journalist for El Diario newspaper in El Paso is the second former journalist charged in the case. Martah Alondra Lozano, who once worked as a news editor for the El Paso Univision affiliate KINT-TV, faces charges of tampering with evidence and conspiracy to tamper with evidence.

Lozano, who had most recently been working as a temporary employee for the city, has pleaded not guilty. She recently said in a Spanish-language interview with El Diario that she has a clear conscience.

Reyes, meanwhile, is accused of having a more central role in the alleged extortion plot.

The lap dance

According to the criminal complaint against him, Reyes is the man who Sunland Park spokesman Arturo Alba, who’s also charged in the case, identified to then-candidate Daniel Salinas and supporters as someone who could “dig up dirt” on Hernandez during a campaign meeting held late last year.

The group allegedly decided to hire Reyes for $2,000, court records state, and Salinas paid that amount in cash.

Reyes made contact with Hernandez in late January, bringing a still-unidentified woman to Hernandez’s campaign tent outside city hall and secretly recording a video of her topless with the candidate, investigators allege.

After obtaining the video, Reyes demanded an additional $7,000 for it, court records state. Alba, Salinas and City Manager Jaime Aguilera, who is also charged in the case, all viewed the video, and Reyes was allegedly paid an additional $3,000 and promised “a future web page creation contract” from the city worth $5,000.

The extortion threat

On Feb. 15, former City Councilor Angelica Marquez, who’s also charged in the case, picked Reyes up at the Santa Teresa Port of Entry, court records state. Marquez took Reyes to an El Paso restaurant, where Alba and Aguilera picked him up. They gave Reyes a copy of a photograph taken from the lap-dance video and took him to a dollar store in Sunland Park. Court records state that the city officials purchased “a hat and sunglasses” for Reyes to wear “as a disguise.”

Two other people who haven’t been identified then picked up Reyes at the dollar store and drove him to Sunland Park City Hall, where he allegedly showed Hernandez the photograph from the lap-dance video and threatened to release it publicly if Hernandez didn’t quit the race.

Hernandez instead reported the threat to law enforcement and stayed in the race. Since then, eight current and former city officials and Reyes have been charged in the extortion case and a separate voter-fraud case investigators allege was also aimed at helping Salinas win the race.

Seven of the nine people charged in the case have been arrested. Alba, the last of the seven to remain in jail, posted bond late Tuesday and has been released. The investigation is ongoing.

Voters chose Salinas over Hernandez and another candidate last week, but Salinas hasn’t been sworn in because he’s also charged in the extortion case and his conditions of release from jail prohibit him from stepping foot in city hall.

Hernandez says he’s going to appeal the election results.