Don Stapley’s Biggest Crime Was Failing to Hide His Real Estate Dealings as Well as Sheriff Joe Arpaio Did

I'm not exaggerating. The 39-page indictment issued against Stapley last week is full of serious-sounding allegations: perjury, forgery, false swearing. But here's what it comes down to. Stapley listed his real estate investment company on financial disclosure forms with the county. But, for fourteen years, he failed to list the company's holdings.

That's it.

There is no suggestion in the indictment that Stapley used his position to enhance the value of the property. Nor does it appear that he actively sought to hide his assets. Stapley repeatedly listed his partial ownership of a company called Arroyo Pacific — and that company, records show, was the owner of the majority of properties in question. Any doofus with minimal knowledge of the county recorder's office could easily track the company's holdings.

Which, of course, is not the case when it comes to the real estate dealings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Seven years ago, as my former colleague John Dougherty first reported, Arpaio obtained a court order to purge his real estate records from county files. Arizona law allows judges, cops, and prosecutors to petition the court to keep their home addresses and telephone numbers out of county records.

But Arpaio used the law to hide records of his commercial dealings, too. You want to know how much he paid for a pair of strip malls, or who loaned him the money to do it? Good luck. Dougherty was only able to report a few minimum details of the sheriff's activities — for example, that Arpaio plunked down $440,000 in cash for a piece of property in Fountain Hills — because a few files had accidentally escaped deletion.

As loyal readers will remember, it was Dougherty's push to learn more about the properties in question that triggered the sheriff's attempt to prosecute him, and this newspaper. (We had the temerity to point out that the sheriff's address was all over various county records, so why the secrecy regarding the commercial stuff?)

So. Arpaio brazenly manipulated the law to hide his own investments. "These aren't things that are bought by county money," his flack later told KTAR, trying to justify the secrecy. "This is personal, personal money."

But when Stapley failed to disclosure his "personal, personal" business dealings on a county form, Arpaio and Thomas nailed him with 118 felonies?

This has gone beyond irony.

This is insanity.

On some level, Stapley has only himself to blame. Financial disclosure forms are mandatory for a reason: We, the public, need a way to keep tabs on our politicians' potential conflicts. Full and complete disclosure of all assets, whether owned by a guy like Stapley or a business under his control, is the best way to facilitate that.

But, as Robert Robb pointed out in the Arizona Republic on Sunday, the Legislature has enacted a very specific penalty for public officials who don't fill out the forms, or (like Stapley) do so incompletely.

It's a first-degree misdemeanor.

After looking closely at the indictment, Stapley's forms and other public records, that sounds just about right in this case. As best I can tell, Stapley's failures are a case of sloppiness more than willful concealment.

Take, for example, a limited liability company called Mariposa Pacific LLC. Arpaio and Thomas socked Stapley with 13 felonies for failing to report his interest in the company on financial disclosure forms from 2001 to 2004.

But it's not like Stapley was trying to hide it. In a personal disclosure statement he filed with the county recorder in 2000, he listed Mariposa Pacific. He just failed to include it in a slightly different set of forms filed with the clerk of the board of supervisors.

Or take another limited liability company, Galleria III. Stapley is charged with four felony counts for failing to disclose his membership in the company in 1997. But Stapley clearly wasn't attempting to hide the company's existence — just months before, he and his partners had discussed their new venture, and its plans to rehab the Scottsdale Galleria, in a puff piece that ran in the Phoenix Business Journal.

At their press conference last week, Arpaio and Thomas suggested that Stapley was hiding his real estate dealings because he didn't want to be associated with Conley Wolfswinkel. Wolfswinkel, it's fair to say, is a lousy bedfellow for any ambitious politician: Convicted of bank fraud in 1993 in the wake of the savings & loan scandal, his name is invariably preceded by "the notorious" in newspaper stories, even today.

But Thomas' suggestion that Stapley was trying to hide his association with Wolfswinkel simply doesn't hold water.

The Wolfswinkels are part of the same old East Valley crowd as the Stapleys. They are not persona non grata, as much as we journalists may wish it.

Just look at that story in the Phoenix Business Journal. It clearly discusses the fact that Stapley and Conley Wolfswinkel were partners in the Scottsdale Galleria venture.