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Moonlighting scandal: Che Guevara fights to save his job at the California State Athletic Commission
By Zach Arnold | February 1, 2013
To read all CSAC-related articles, dating back to May 2012, CLICK HERE.
The last two months have been no good and very rotten for one Che Guevara at the California State Athletic Commission in Sacramento. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, either.
Guevara, who obtained his job as Chief Athletic Inspector at CSAC after perjuring himself (thanks Karen Chappelle) in the Antonio Margarito hand-wrap scandal in 2009, is fighting to keep his job at the commission after being embroiled in major political trouble.
There are several factors that have contributed to the deterioration of Guevara’s job stability. The first factor is the fraudulent audit by the Bureau of State Audits which has attacked CSAC for paying time-and-a-half to full-time state employees who work as athletic inspectors at shows. The commission has taken a big hit in Sacramento’s political circles and in the sycophantic California press which regurgitates what press flacks from various agencies tell them to parrot. The result of the state of California going after athletic inspectors with letters of confiscation for back pay is that some of Guevara’s biggest allies, like Mohammad Noor, have simply left the commission. With Noor leaving CSAC, Mark Relyea has been selected as the #1 lead inspector in Southern California. This has allegedly caused turmoil with inspector Anthony Olivas, a Che Guevara ally who (according to two sources on background) is not happy that he’s stuck behind Relyea in the pecking order. However, there are two factors at work here. One, Relyea is trusted by Andy Foster. Two, Olivas was the lead inspector during the incredible disaster last September in Oxnard where deadbeat promoters Raul Barbosa Orozco and Armando Renteria stiffed fighters out of their purses by canceling a show at the last minute due to ticket sales (which in and of itself is an illegal act according to California state code). Thanks to Andy Foster’s efforts to get the Oxnard fighters their money, an estimated $13,000 hit on Orozco’s promoter bond was issued. Since the bond hit, Orozco’s contractor’s license has been suspended in the state of California because no active bond is listed with his license.
Inspectors out in the field are furious at what is going on and how bad the communication has been. Guevara had been in charge of booking assignments for inspectors and officials for shows. With angry inspectors leaving or protesting, Guevara’s mix of people that he needs for political stability is being rattled.
The second strike against Guevara is that state auditors are digging deep in regards to missing revenue from botched box offices by inspectors out in the field. Remember, part of Che Guevara’s job is to teach inspectors how to calculate box offices correctly. He didn’t do that — something which we pointed out — and now the state auditors are finding this out for themselves. The box office packages being sent to Sacramento after shows are often incomplete or missing receipts. There’s a lot of heat on Guevara over this right now in various CADEM (California Democratic Party) circles that pay attention to what’s happening at CSAC.
It should be pointed out that, outside of scanning medical documents, the majority of data at the commission’s office is in paper form and not electronic. This includes the lists for promoters, fighters, so on and so forth. It was only until recently that inspectors were given Excel spreadsheets to use to calculate box offices. We’re still hearing reports out in the field about some inspectors having difficulties figuring out how to calculate the box offices properly.
The third strike against Guevara’s job security is that he has been stripped of many of his job duties. Multiple sources from different political factions have told us that Guevara’s booking power has been taken away. One source, on background, claims that Guevara is limited to working Northern California shows as a lead inspector and doing basic office duties. He has supposedly being told to review box offices. If he screws up, he’s finished. The office currently has an assistant from the Department of Consumer Affairs that is supposed to audit the event packages.
How did Guevara lose his booking power (and why is this important)? Guevara told associates last December that he was taking a month off. 30 days for a vacation? It didn’t sound kosher to many people out in the field at shows and the rumor mill quickly spread that the 30 day ‘vacation’ was to be viewed as some sort of suspension or warning. Multiple sources have indicated to us that Andy Foster, the new Executive Officer, played no role in Guevara being gone for 30 days.
Guevara came back after his 30 day ‘vacation’ and found out that he was stripped of his booking power by Andy Foster (during his absence). The power to book inspectors and officials for shows was how Che Guevara maintained his political power while people like George Dodd were left to take the political fall. Now that this power is gone, Guevara’s political power has become real shaky. Two sources claim that Foster caught Guevara trying to book inspectors for a show behind his back and put a stop to it.
The mystery regarding the 30-day vacation/suspension continues. The Sacramento Bee, however, may have just given us a clue as to how shaky Guevara’s job status really is. This is something that Denise Brown & Awet Kidane at the Department of Consumer Affairs did not want to deal with. Their golden boy continues to give them more public relations headaches.
The Sacramento Bee has been investigating the practice of ‘moonlighting’ by full-time state employees who have been given second or even third jobs in their own state department and paid a full salary per extra job. Guess who is now one of the state employees in the cross-hairs over moonlighting? Che Guevera. You won’t see the Sacramento Bee publish his name in their newest document dump, but his job title and moonlighting practice is the first item of data on their new moonlighting list.
Take a look at the embedded Google Doc spreadsheet that the Sacramento Bee has posted on their web site:
Guevara has, according to The Bee, been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The Chief Athletic Inspector at CSAC was allegedly not only getting paid nearly $4,700 a month for his job, he was also getting $26 an hour for working at shows… as a Chief Athletic Inspector.
Take note that Guevara was not the only person in the CSAC front office who also got paid a separate wage as an athletic inspector at shows. Look at our tax records and you will see Sarah Waklee, Nichole Bowles and Brandon Saucedo who got paid as inspectors and for CSAC office work by DCA. Waklee, Bowles, and Saucedo no longer work in the CSAC front office and none of the three had “Chief Athletic Inspector” in their job title, but an aggressive state auditor or stooge from DCA’s “Department of Investigation” could always target them because they are vulnerable here.
The Bee’s investigation into state workers moonlighting for their same state department has caused an uproar in Sacramento and has sucked up a lot of California media oxygen this week. It’s resulted in legislation being proposed to stop the moonlighting practice for state employees when it comes to ‘additional appointments.’
With his booking power stripped, a 30 day ‘vacation,’ state auditors breathing down his neck, political allies quitting, and bosses desperate to throw someone under the bus to maintain a phony political image, Che Guevara is discovering that he’s starting to run out of allies in Sacramento.
What he doesn’t know is that the worst has yet to come for him.
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