He was accused of taking $37,412 from November 2000 to May 2006 from the West Bronx Neighborhood Association, a nonprofit organization he founded, and using it for personal expenses, including New York Yankees tickets and membership fees at a vacation club in the Dominican Republic.
[3] A superseding indictment followed on December 12, 2006, accusing Gonzalez and others of mail fraud and theft of federal funds in a conspiracy to steal $423,000 through a complicated scheme that involved funneling the money through the West Bronx Neighborhood Association and the United Latin American Foundation, another not-for-profit group.
As in the first set of charges, he was also accused of using state money and about $40,000 in federal grants for membership fees in a vacation club, rent and renovations for homes used by his wife and mother-in-law, and items like Yankees tickets, jewelry and college tuition for his daughter, and designing and printing labels for cigars produced by a company he owned.
Neil Berger and Miguel Castanos, co-defendants who were involved in the scheme with the non-profit organizations and indicted with Gonzalez, also pleaded guilty, and Lucia Sanchez, a fourth defendant, went to trial.
[7] However, U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III, the trial judge, refused to allow Gonzalez to withdraw his plea, stating that the request "presents the paradigm of the defendant who attempts to undermine the integrity of the judicial process" and "the notion that the free will of a longtime New York state senator was overridden by the imminence of trial, coercion by his attorney, or pressure from this court is preposterous.