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Escondido school official faces election fraud hearing

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A preliminary hearing began Tuesday in the elections fraud case against Escondido Union School District Trustee Jose Fragozo, with prosecutors arguing that vehicle, tax and cellphone records show Fragozo didn’t live in the area he was elected to serve.

Defense attorney Victor Torres sought to poke holes in the testimony, saying the state failed to conduct a thorough investigation as it pursued charges against Fragozo.

The hearing is expected to wrap up Wednesday,when San Diego Superior Court Judge Blaine Bowman will decide whether Fragozo will face trial for 13 felonies linked to allegations that he misrepresented his place of residence to get elected.

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If convicted of all charges — which include perjury, false voter registration, and filing false election documents — Fragozo could face a maximum sentence of nine years and four months in prison.

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Fragozo has denied any criminal wrongdoing and said he’s being victimized for pointing out problems in the elementary school district.

“It’s just hearsay right now,” Fragozo said Tuesday. “It’s too early.”

A complaint regarding Fragozo’s residency was first filed with the Secretary of State’s Office in 2012, when Fragozo ran for a seat on the school district’s board of trustees. That same year the district changed from electing board members on an at-large basis to electing them by specific areas.

The secretary of state began looking into Fragozo’s residency in early 2013, after receiving complaints that he had falsified his residence to win election.

The investigation has focused on whether Fragozo resides at an apartment at 305 South Maple St., which he listed as his address when he changed his voter registration form July 14, 2012, two days before he declared his candidacy and filed nomination papers.

Fragozo also owns a four-bedroom home at 28346 Crooked Oak Lane, in the Hidden Meadows neighborhood, which falls into a different electoral zone of the school district.

It isn’t illegal for an elected official to have more than one home, but California law says candidates must live in the districts they seek to represent.

Assistant District Attorney Leon Schorr argued Tuesday that although Fragozo rented the Maple Street apartment, he continued to live primarily at his Crooked Oak Lane home.

Schorr called Sterling Hampton, an investigator for the secretary of state, who said he pulled records from the state Department of Motor Vehicles in 2013, showing that Fragozo had not changed his address to the Maple Street apartment.

“I saw that Mr. Fragozo’s address on his driver’s license record was the Crooked Oak address,” Hampton said.

Tax records reflected the same thing, Hampton said, showing that at the time of the election, Fragozo had a homeowners tax exemption for his home on Crooked Oak Lane.

On April 24, 2015, Hanpton said he attempted to contact Fragozo at his Maple Street apartment.

The school district trustee wasn’t there, Hampton said, but a property manager for the complex told the investigator that the apartment wasn’t furnished, and she rarely saw Fragozo at the address.

Hampton said he attempted to speak with another neighbor, but the man only spoke Spanish and couldn’t be interviewed.

During cross-examination Torres noted that Hampton visited in late morning on a weekday, when Fragozo was probably at work.

“You just knocked on this door during working hours?” Torres asked Hampton.

During a break in the hearing, Torres questioned whether Hampton had done all he could to determine Fragozo’s primary residence.

“He didn’t talk to neighbors,” Torres said. “The state of California doesn’t have interpreters? They didn’t really do all that much investigation.”

Schorr also called Don Holmes, an investigator for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office who specializes in phone records.

After mapping Fragozo’s cellphone records, Holmes said a quarter of Fragozo’s calls originated from a cell tower near his house in Hidden Meadows — more than four times as many as those placed through any other cell tower he used, including those near his Maple Street apartment.

Holmes said the most significant calls are the last ones of the day, which tend to indicate where someone lives and sleeps. About 60 percent of those originated from the cell tower near Fragozo’s Hidden Meadows home, he said.

Torres pressed Holmes on whether the calls could be definitively traced to a particular address.

“It’s not a GPS location,” Holmes acknowledged.

“Nor can you tell who possessed the phone when the phone call was made,” Torres noted.

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