Colton Councilman Arrested Over Expenses

A city councilman in scandal-plagued Colton, where several former elected officials have gone to prison for exchanging political support for cash, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of charging thousands of dollars to the city for motel rooms and calls to phone-sex hotlines.

San Bernardino County prosecutors accused Ramon M. “Ramie” Hernandez, a youth minister who was elected on a platform of restoring voter trust, of 24 felony counts of misappropriation of public funds. The investigation, prosecutors said, was continuing and more charges could be filed.

Since December 2004, Hernandez had used his city Visa card to cover at least 20 motel visits, including stays at the Ontario Inn in Montclair and the Econo Lodge in San Bernardino, prosecutors said. He allegedly ran up $426.02 on his city-issued Nextel cellphone account with calls to “party” chat lines.

According to city phone records given to prosecutors, Hernandez appears to also have dialed several phone-sex hotlines, including one that calls itself “the hottest phone sex line in the country.”

The councilman, who is being held on $25,000 bond at the Central Detention Center in San Bernardino, told the city manager that his nephew rang up the credit card charges without his permission, court documents said. He blamed the phone calls on a cloned cellphone, city officials said.

Hernandez has refused to talk to district attorney’s investigators, prosecutor Frank Vanella said. The councilman could not be reached for comment.

“My faith tells me truth will prevail,” he told the Press-Enterprise last week when the investigation was gaining steam.

It’s another corruption case to shake this working-class former railroad town, one expected to have an effect in the November election, when three council spots, including Hernandez’s, and the mayor’s post will be up for grabs.

“There are lots of people saying, ‘No, no, not again,’ ” said David Toro, a supervisor at a computer service company who is running against Hernandez.

Colton is still recovering from a scandal that rocked San Bernardino County over the last decade, when four former City Council members pleaded guilty to accepting bribes in exchange for their support of development deals in the city.

That scandal was the second wave of corruption in the area. Earlier, two top county administrators were sentenced in a bribery case and county Supervisor Gerald “Jerry” Eaves pleaded guilty in a similar case and was forced to resign. His district included Colton, with about 51,000 residents wedged between Rialto and San Bernardino.

The latest case, said Richard A. DeLaRosa, a councilman since 1998, “has unfortunately put the city of Colton under a cloud of mistrust.”

DeLaRosa said all council members could do was keep residents informed about the investigation’s progress. Mayor Deirdre H. Bennett suggested that the city look into cutting up its credit cards.

“Whether people make assumptions before he’s been tried, that’s up to them,” said Councilwoman Helen A. Ramos. “This is a setback for the city.”

In December, former Councilman Donald Sanders became the last city official sentenced in the federal corruption probe for accepting cash from former Colton Mayor Abe Beltran to vote in favor of an exclusive contract for a mobile home company.

U.S. District Judge James V. Selna, who sentenced Sanders to 17 days in jail and $45,000 in restitution and fines, told the former councilman that his remorse seemed genuine but that “breaches of public trust will not be tolerated.”

Hernandez, 46, who is married with children, grabbed Sanders’ seat in a March 2002 special election. He later told the Press-Enterprise: “I believe I’ve brought much-needed dignity to the council. I’ve built up rapport with constituents. Their trust in government was really, really low.”

In court documents filed Thursday, investigators detailed how a city office manager discovered Hernandez’s $4,782.10 in suspect motel charges -- an apparent violation of city rules that bar officials in most cases from expensing lodging within a 50-mile radius of the city.

The office manager also reported Hernandez’s unauthorized cellphone calls and text messages from June 2005 to May 2006.

Records indicate that Hernandez also used his city cellphone to dial, for example, a service named Secret Encounters, on which a woman breathlessly intones, “Some call for fun conversation, some call to party, and some call just to get off on hot, sexy talk.”

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Times staff writer Lance Pugmire contributed to this report.