It’s been about four years since former state Sen. Carlos Uresti turned himself in to begin serving a 12-year federal prison sentence for securities fraud, money laundering and other crimes.
Earlier this year, Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra — who originally sentenced Uresti in two unrelated cases — quietly reduced the sentences in both cases. The judge’s reasons for slashing the sentences were filed under seal.
Uresti’s 12-year sentence in the first case was cut to eight years while his five-year sentence in the second was reduced to a year. The sentences run concurrently.
Uresti, though, is slated to serve far less time than that. The Bureau of Prisons’ website shows his release date is Dec. 12, 2024. That means he’ll serve about five years and 10 months — or less than half of his original sentence.
So how did Uresti, 59, manage to get so much time lopped off? Could he have provided help to investigators in a case in exchange for shaving time off his sentence?
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Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Blackwell, the lead prosecutor in Uresti’s criminal cases, declined to comment.
Mikal Watts, one of Uresti’s lawyers, said he didn’t know anything about the longtime Democratic lawmaker helping investigators.
“I think I would have heard,” Watts said.
A Trump reform?
He said he think the reason Uresti will serve far less time than his sentence called for is the First Step Act, signed by President Donald Trump in 2018 to reform sentencing laws.
Under the law, federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than every year of their sentenced served.
Watts suggested Uresti also could have had a year knocked off for completing a Residential Drug Abuse Program. But Watts added that he didn’t know if Uresti had participated in the program. Ezra had recommended that Uresti participate in a 500-hour drug treatment program while incarcerated.
He also may have received credit for teaching classes when he was locked up in a Louisiana prison, Watts said. Uresti is now at the low-security federal correctional institution in Bastrop.
“He was the senior citizen of the prison, if you will, teaching all these guys,” Watts said. That included classes for inmates to earn high school equivalency diplomas.
That, however, doesn’t explain Ezra’s decision to amend the sentences.
Court records show the judge conducted a sealed hearing in both cases Nov. 18. That was after Uresti’s counsel and prosecutors each filed sealed documents the same week. The judge amended Uresti’s sentences on Jan. 10.
‘Snitch agreements’
Joey Contreras, a former federal prosecutor and state district judge, said the feds sometimes make recommendations to judges to give defendants sentence reductions for “substantial” assistance in their investigations. The assistance can be against co-defendants or accomplices in the same case, or even in unrelated investigations. The recommendations can be made before sentencing, or even after, and are generally sealed, he said.
They can result in a defendant’s sentence being slashed significantly, he noted.
“They’re known as ‘snitch agreements,’” said Contreras, who prosecuted organized crime, including one of the state’s largest gangs, the Texas Mexican Mafia. Some defendants he prosecuted were granted significant sentence reductions through those recommendations, he said.
A jury in 2018 found Uresti guilty of 11 felony charges for his role as legal counsel in FourWinds Logistics Inc., a now-defunct San Antonio company that bought and sold sand used in fracking for oil production. Investors, including those recruited by Uresti, were defrauded.
The case cost Uresti his long political career, his law practice, his wealth, his marriage and his freedom.
On ExpressNews.com: Carlos Uresti gets 5 years in prison in bribery case
In the second case, Uresti in 2019 received a five-year sentence on an unrelated public-corruption charge in West Texas.
Uresti had pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to commit bribery rather than go to trial.
He still has to serve three years of supervised release and, along with other defendants, must pay $6.3 million in restitution to victims in the FourWinds’ case. He also must pay $876,000 in restitution in the bribery case.
At the 2019 sentencing, Uresti said, “It is my primary mission and my goal to redeem myself to my friends, my family and victims.”
Watts last visited Uresti Feb. 11 at Bastrop.
“He’s doing as well as can be hoped,” Watts said. “I think he was doing well.”
Uresti plans to return to San Antonio and get a job upon his release, Watts said.
“He’d be the world’s most qualified paralegal,” Watts said with a laugh. “I’d give him a job.”
Staff writer Guillermo Contreras contributed to this report.
pdanner@express-news.net
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