ICE: four charged over vehicle excise-tax bribes at Hacienda

On December 15, 2023, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that a federal grand jury in the District of Puerto Rico returned a 20-count indictment on December 14 against four people for conspiracy to commit bribery in a program that receives federal funds, paying and receiving bribes, and honest-services wire fraud. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the FBI investigated, with support from the Treasury Department, the Police and Corrections.

According to the release, throughout 2020 and 2021 Ariel Pintado-Montalvo — a facilitator in vehicle imports — made repeated bribe payments to Treasury employees in exchange for approving fraudulent vehicle excise-tax declarations and for speeding up non-fraudulent ones. Co-defendants Antonio Silva-Rodríguez, Héctor Vázquez-Barroso and Doris Bonilla-Valle, Treasury employees, allegedly used their posts for that scheme. Pintado-Montalvo paid “thousands of dollars” in cash and via ATH Móvil.

The Unified Internal Revenue System (SURI) calculates the excise with the Black Book when the VIN (vehicle identification number) is correct. If the VIN is entered wrong, the declarant can put a market value and a Treasury employee must review. In the fraudulent declarations, according to court documents cited by ICE, they agreed to enter incorrect VINs to force that review; Pintado-Montalvo would flag the declaration number by WhatsApp; then Silva-Rodríguez, Vázquez-Barroso or Bonilla-Valle would approve it and tip him off. The same channel was used to seek fast approval of lawful declarations, with the bribe paid in batches.

HSI San Juan (Rebecca González-Ramos), U.S. Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow, FBI San Juan (Joseph González) and Treasury Secretary Francisco Parés-Alicea framed the case as an abuse of public trust and a loss of revenue for the Island. Parés said that in 2021 he shared system data on possible fraud in vehicle introductions.

The indictment contains only charges and is not proof of guilt: the accused are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. This note does not turn the indictment into a conviction or invent fiscal-loss amounts the primary does not fix.