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NOTICES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS SERVES TUBAC AND SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ARIZONA. 

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A southern Arizona county is requesting a jury trial as it sues its former treasurer over allegations she embezzled more than $39 million over 10 years.

Santa Cruz County filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in Pima Superior Court against former county Treasurer Elizabeth Gutfahr, her husband and son, and several other unnamed individuals and corporate entities.

Investigations by the FBI, Department of Justice and local agencies remain ongoing, the county said. “For more than a decade, Gutfahr used County funds as her own personal piggy-bank to fund an opulent and extravagant lifestyle — purchasing several ranches, vehicles, and more,” prosecutors alleged in court documents.

The county is pursuing more than a half-dozen charges, including fraud, conversion, civil conspiracy, racketeering and breach of fiduciary duty. The county is also pursuing negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment as alternative charges if Gutfahr and the other defendants are not found guilty. The county claims it has suffered $1.35 million in lost interest from the theft.

The county is requesting compensation for the missing funds, and control of a constructed trust over all assets Gutfahr purchased with the county funds. “The County now brings this action to reclaim the money that Gutfahr wrongfully took, as well as its attorneys’ fees and costs,” said the county in its lawsuit. “Because Gutfahr’s actions were so outrageous, the County also seeks treble damages under Arizona’s Anti-Racketeering Statute.”

The lawsuit was filed in Pima County Superior Court because Gutfahr's business that received the allegedly embezzled funds, Rio Rico Consulting LLC, is headquartered in Pima County. One of Gutfahr's residences is also in the county, the lawsuit stated.

The alleged theft was discovered in April after JPMorgan Chase, the county's bank, reported 11 fraudulent transactions for $375,000 to the county. The findings prompted investigations by the Federal Bureau of Justice, Department of Justice, Arizona Auditor General’s Office, and Santa Cruz County.

Guftahr, a Democrat, did not respond to requests for comment, and no legal document responding to the allegations has been posted on the Arizona Superior Court database.

Investigation into the missing money found Gutfahr allegedly diverted funds from the county’s savings account meant to generate interest for county departments and county entities, like school and fire districts.

These funds were diverted to one of her businesses, Rio Rico Consulting, based in Oro Valley, prosecutors said in court records.

The county alleged she has several other companies that either helped her embezzle public funds, or that own assets purchased with the county funds.

Also listed as defendants in the lawsuit are “John and Jane Does I-X,” unknown individuals that conspired with or aided and abetted the alleged embezzlement. The suit also lists “John Doe corporate Entities I-X,” unknown corporations that allegedly illegally received county funds or helped steal the funds.

The lawsuit accuses Gutfahr of successfully avoiding detection for so long using three strategies, including diverting money in certain months, misrepresenting the total balance of funds in finance reports, and fabricating investment statements.

“Gutfahr was able to evade detection for so long through accounting tricks and outright fabrications,” state court documents.

During the annual audit by the Arizona Auditor General, the state agency reviewed June year-end financial statements from the preceding year, so Gutfahr avoided diverting funds to Rio Rico Consulting in June and July.

Gutfahr also allegedly misreported the daily warrants line item to a third-party consultant to avoid detection from 2018 to 2023.

“Gutfahr would claim that 'daily warrants' that cleared in the bank accounts but not posted in the general ledgers were much higher than they actually were,” said the lawsuit. This allowed her to fill the gap in declining account balances and cover up her wires to Rio Rico Consulting LLC.

As the alleged theft increased throughout the decade, her methods of evading detection became more involved, leading her to reportedly doctor investment bank statements.

“She was no longer able to paper-over the Rio Rico wires merely by falsely reporting daily outstanding warrant reconciliation numbers,” said the lawsuit.

The county is still investigating the allegedly doctored statements but has found five created from 2021 to 2023.

As part of the audit cash reconciliation process, Gutfahr provided a statement for a UBS investment account to a consultant in October or November 2021. The statement dated June 2021 showed a balance of $14 million, according to court documents. But investigators discovered Gutfahr only opened the account with UBC Wealth Management, an investment bank, in October 2021, months after statement’s date.

Court documents claim she had subsequently transferred $14 million from the County Operating Account to the UBS Investment account.

The lawsuit alleged Gutfahr used a real UBS statement from October showing the $14 million balance to create a back-dated fake document showing the same balance in June.

Evidence of doctoring among the five statements differs in each statement. This includes using her business’ mailing address in Tumacacori, and a Rio Rico address for UBS Financial Services Inc., instead of the bank’s actual Phoenix address. The statements also changed the name of the financial advisor and phone number assigned to the account, among other changes.

In the second fabricated financial statement supplied to the third-party consultant in June 2022, the fund balance was correct but other information was incorrect. One of the inconsistencies included the contact information for the UBS financial advisor associated with the account.  

The county claims the phone number on the second statement belonged to a former employee on Gutfahr’s Rancho San Cayetano, which it said was done to ensure any auditor would contact Gutfahr or her contacts instead of UBS.

The lawsuit alleged Gutfahr was able to evade detection because she waited to supply the third-party consultant with investment statements after she had received the legitimate UBS investment statements.

“Gutfahr was able to pull this off, it seems, because she did not actually supply the third-party consultant with investment statements … until after Gutfahr received the legitimate UBS investment statements,” the lawsuit alleged.

Gutfahr and her husband have a history of tax liens filed against them, according to court documents. The first, filed in 2011, was released. Prosecutors said the second was filed against them in 2013, and the third was filed in 2015 for $160,848 and released two years later.

Gutfahr was elected county treasurer in 2012 and reelected in 2016 and 2020. Before the embezzlement allegations came to light, she was running unopposed in the 2024 election.  

Previously she worked in real estate in Santa Cruz County.

Investigators found while she had a self-employed broker’s license number, which was issued in 2008, the employer associated with the license, Rio Rico Consulting & Real Estate is not registered with the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Sarah Lapidus reprinted from the ARIZONA REPUBLIC

Reach the reporter at sarah.lapidus@gannett.com. The Republic’s coverage of southern Arizona is funded, in part, with a grant from Report for America. Support Arizona news coverage with a tax-deductible donation at supportjournalism.azcentral.com.

The Santa Cruz Humane Society is a no kill shelter that provides compassionate care and adoption services for homeless dogs and cats in Nogales, Arizona. Visit us and take home your new family member today!

SHOP and DONATE at our thrift store to help support our mission.

Together, we represent thousands of Pima and Santa Cruz County residents who want to see the river corridor protected in perpetuity. The Santa Cruz River Refuge coalition recognizes that the Santa Cruz River has been a storied spiritual and cultural place for the Tohono O’odham and their distinct ancestors, and Pascua Yaqui people from time immemorial. We recognize that the people of the San Xavier District, in particular, have ancestral ties to the flowing Santa Cruz River and the lands around it. The original homeland of the O’odham and their ancestors, including the Hohokam and Early Agricultural People, is located on the river, which they collectively have stewarded for millennia. They continue to access these lands for ongoing cultural and religious practices.

The ecologically and culturally rich Santa Cruz River flows through the heart of Tucson, a fast-growing city of over 1 million people in the greater metropolitan area. After generations of colonization and groundwater overuse, the surface flow stopped running in some areas, with flows all but drying up except during heavy seasonal rains. In 2012, Pima County approved funding to vastly improve the quality of wastewater effluent that was being released into the Santa Cruz River. By upgrading the wastewater treatment facilities—which currently release highly treated wastewater into the Santa Cruz—local leaders, alongside restoration volunteers, created over 25 miles of vibrant habitat that has been foundational to the recovery of native vegetation, wildlife, insects, and migratory bird species.

The Santa Cruz corridor offers abundant recreation opportunities, including birdwatching at Sweetwater Wetlands and cycling and walking along the beloved 137-mile Chuck Huckelberry Loop, a popular paved recreation trail with dozens of access points that runs alongside the Santa Cruz and its major tributaries.

Our vision for an urban national wildlife refuge imagines an archipelago of protected properties along the Santa Cruz River that would offer permanent wildlife habitat and outdoor access. The Tucson land would anchor this “string of pearls,” offering shade, river access, and outdoor education for the neighboring communities. The Santa Cruz River Urban National Wildlife Refuge draws inspiration and lessons from current exemplary restoration work happening along the corridor, including the San Xavier District’s Wa:k Hikdan project.

Please reach out to your Congressional Representative(s) and ask them to oppose H.R. 2925, the “Mining Regulatory Clarity Act” sometime this week, as it will be voted on next week.

THE MINING REGULATORY CLARITY ACT: THE LARGEST HANDOUT TO THE MINING INDUSTRY SINCE 1872
 

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act represents an unprecedented giveaway of America’s cherished public lands to mining corporations, upending and reversing over a hundred years of public land law precedent. Under the bill, anyone—for a nominal fee—gains absolute rights to occupy land in perpetuity, construct massive waste dumps, and build roads and pipelines across public lands to the detriment of all other values. This would preclude all other types of development and use, including renewable energy projects, recreation, and traditional cultural uses.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act would undermine the federal government’s longstanding authority to safeguard public lands,threatening the protection of irreplaceable cultural, environmental, and economic resources. That’s because the bill conveys mining claimants with an absolute right to permanently occupy lands. If an alternative use—like an electric transmission line or a renewable energy project—needed to cross “claimed” public lands, mining companies could extract large sums of money from the federal government in exchange for giving up their claim.
 

Unintended consequences – this bill could easily be weaponized. A person wishing to block a solar or wind farm or transmission project could simply file a claim in the path or the project and would be conveyed an absolute right to block it from moving forward.

Under Section 2(e)(1)(B), mining companies would receive a statutory right to permanently occupy and bury our federal public lands under tons of toxic waste. Further, Section 2(e)1(A) grants mining companies automatic rights-of-way for new pipelines, transmission lines, and roads across public lands—eliminating a central provision of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that requires mining companies to receive a permit for such uses just like every other industry operating on public lands. Section 2(e)(2) would also eliminate FLPMA’s requirement that the company pay “fair market value” for using public lands for these facilities.

The Mining Regulatory Clarify Act was authored in reaction to recent court decisions that affirmed and enforced longstanding law.  According to proponents of this egregious corporate handout, the need from this bill arises from ac our case known as Rosemont, as well as two subsequent federal court rulings, where a company proposed using invalid mining claims to dump enormous quantities of waste generated at the mine site.  Their solution was to assert a right to dump water on thousands of acres of public lands, despite any valid mining claims.  The problem with that was obvious and courts blocked them:  holding an invalid mining claim confers no right to use or occupy the lands covered by the claim unless a valuable mineral is discovered.

This bill would tip the scales away from communities, the environment, and our clean energy future--giving the mining industry the power to dictate how we use our public lands.  Instead, Congress should work to balance our nation's clean energy mineral needs with all other public land uses, such as for renewable energy projects, cultural and historical resources, ranching, recreation, water resources, and wildlife.

Let's do our part == contact your legislators by clicking on the link below. Let them know that you OPPOSE the Mining Regulatory Act. Find and contact elected officialsI

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