The former director of events and marketing at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds has admitted she demanded and received kickbacks from a security company that patrolled the 150-acre San Jose fairgrounds.
The venue in East San Jose hosts trade shows, cultural events and the annual county fair.
As part of a plea bargaining agreement,Obdulia Banuelos-Esparza, 42, must pay back $40,000 to the security company and will be ordered to serve felony probation, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Her formal sentencing is set for Aug. 14.
County prosecutors charged the Sunnyvale resident last fall after an investigation revealed that Banuelos-Esparza had threatened to terminate a firm’s contract to provide security services for the fairgrounds unless the company gave her a cut of the payments.
The security company paid $40,000 to Banuelos-Esparza over more than a year before the company’s owner refused to pay any more, according to prosecutors. Two months later, the security company’s contract was terminated.
The 2025 county fair ended Aug. 3.
The DA’s investigation began in September 2023 when the office received a referral from the County Counsel’s Whistleblower Program of a citizen’s complaint alleging various types of wrongdoing, including the kickback scheme.
The investigation showed that Banuelos-Esparza asked the owner of the security company to pay her a percentage of the money the company would be receiving under its contract with Santa Clara County Fairgrounds Management Corporation.
When the owner initially refused, Banuelos-Esparza accused the company’s guards of sleeping on the job and warned that the contract was in jeopardy. She offered to intervene on the company’s behalf in exchange for the payments. She threatened that the company’s contract with FMC would be terminated if the payments were not made.
Pressured by the economic uncertainties at the height of the COVID pandemic in the summer of 2020, the owner started paying Banuelos-Esparza monthly cash payments calculated at $1 per guard-hour worked, according to prosecutors. The payments started out at around $2,500 per month but eventually grew to nearly $4,000 per month.
