As Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) special agent Randy Wolverton sat quietly analyzing the bank records of two people who had several accounts in different banks around town, it soon became apparent that bank fraud was part of the family history. It was tedious and laborious work that would eventually reveal “that a large kite was underway” involving a father-and-son and their checking accounts at four banks. One of the names Wolverton was looking at was already well-known to the FBI.
On December 19, 1975, the People’s Bank in Willcox Arizona was shuttered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) after it was discovered that money was missing. The bank’s directors – one from El Paso – were under investigation. It would soon be learned that the El Pasoan was not just a director, but the owner of the bank.
In March 1977, the FDIC filed a civil lawsuit to recover $1.8 million it said was taken from the bank. Several people, including a former baseball player, soon pleaded guilty to bank fraud charges admitting that they had fraudulently taken out loans from the bank. One name was missing from the FDIC’s civil lawsuit and the criminal investigation. Billie Mac Jobe had moved to El Paso in 1973, bringing along his family. Around five years later he was arrested by FBI agents.
On February 17, 1978, a federal grand jury in Tucson issued an indictment against 16 individuals connected to the failed bank. That same day, FBI agents arrested Billie Mac Jobe, a self-described self-employed real estate broker at his place of business in the Lower Valley.
It turned out that Jobe was not just a self-employed broker but was the “lead defendant in the 19-page indictment.” The bank’s former owner faced 165 years in jail. The indictment charged him with 33 counts of bank fraud. The investigation into People’s Bank was characterized at the time by the FBI as “the most complex bank fraud ever investigated.” Most of the charges involved “check kiting.”
Check kiting is writing a check from one bank account and depositing it into another bank account to artificially inflate the balance. To keep the balance artificially inflated, checks are drawn from one account, deposited into another, and then another with each check covering the other by taking advantage of the time it takes the bank to receive the funds from the other bank. The time it takes money from one bank to reach the other is known as the “float.”
The drop in use of paper checks has reduced the amount of time it takes for the bank to get the funds from the other bank. Because a bank usually credits an account as soon as the check is deposited, the money for the check technically exists in two accounts, the account where it was deposited and the account where the check is drawn from.
It is this time lag, between both banks that is the “float.” The time lag allows fraudsters to make it look like the bank accounts have more money than they do. As one check makes its way to the other bank, another is deposited to cover the overdraft, making the account look like it had more money than exists. The banks used in the complex fraud were in Alabama, Arizona, California, Kansas, Missouri and Texas. According to prosecutors, “the scheme involved an intricate pattern of worthless checks, each written to cover another worthless check, bounced through empty or non-existent accounts, between dummy corporations and then returned to the Willcox bank to be written off.” It was the FDIC that would be forced to cover the $1.7 million shortfall, the prosecutors explained.
When the trial began on November 20, 1978, prosecutors told the jury that of the five defendants in the courtroom, the “mastermind” of the bank fraud was Billie Mac Jobe. The day after the prosecution began to present their case, most of the defendants acquiesced and pleaded guilty, including Billie Mac Jobe. He had made a deal with the prosecutors to testify against the remaining fraudsters.
In court, Billie Mac Jobe admitted to the jury that “he used his friends and business associates, without their knowledge, to provide signed blank checks” for the bank fraud starting in January 1973. He would do the same thing 16 years later to other people, including his son.
The fraud ended in 1975 when the FDIC closed the bank after a scheduled review of the bank records discovered that money was missing.
Billie Mac Jobe told the jury that he used Carl L. Howard as part of the scheme knowing that Howard “knew nothing of bank procedures.” In a related case, Billie Mac Jobe testified for his son-in-law Tom G. Epperson, who was also convicted. Epperson’s attorney, Lee Chagra, was found dead in his El Paso office less than a day after Epperson was convicted on December 26, 1978. Chagra’s murder had nothing to do with the Willcox bank fraud case, or Epperson.
After helping prosecutors convict his former fraudsters, Billie Mac Jobe was sentenced on January 3, 1979, to five years in federal prison by William C. Frey. In sentencing, Frey said that the defendants had “willfully, systematically violated the law dozens of times,” adding that the fraud “ultimately hangs right around the neck of the taxpayer.” After being sentenced, Billie Mac Jobe said that the “loss was not passed on to taxpayers” because the FDIC, which insures the banks, is funded by the bank’s insurance premiums to the FDIC. Standing before the judge at sentencing, Billie Mac Jobe contritely told the judge that he “regretted having floated checks.” He would do it again later in El Paso.
After moving to El Paso in 1973, Billie Mac Jobe, purchased Valley Concrete Co. in Fabens. In 1983, he and his son, Stanley Pruet Jobe founded Jobe Concrete.
Breaking Rocks In The Hot Sun While Living In Cardboard Boxes
It was like a scene from an old-western movie, men breaking boulders with sledgehammers under the hot summer sun for 12-hours a day. They lived in cardboard boxes. Twenty miles east of El Paso the Mexican men toiled under the hot sun for around $35 a day for their 12-work work. Although Stanley Jobe told the El Paso Herald Post that Jobe Concrete had “absolutely no contact with the workers,” he nonetheless collected “a royalty of $1.20” per ton of rock the workers sold to independent truckers. The truckers would pay $10 per load, averaging between four to five tons. The Jobes would collect about half of the ten dollars for each truckload from the workers because the rock they were quarrying was on land owned by Jobe Concrete.
Jobe Concreate had purchased the land from the state in early 1985. When asked about the workers, Billie Mac Jobe told the El Paso Herald Post that the workers had been there for 25 years, acknowledging that they had “thought about clearing the Mexicans out of there.” Billie Mac Jobe added that the cardboard boxes the workers lived in “were primitive, but livable, and better than what workers knew in Mexico.” Billie Mac Jobe added that the money Jobe Concrete made from the Mexican workers wasn’t significant to the company’s revenues, dismissing concerns that the company was violating minimum wage laws.
The reason that the money from the Mexican laborers wasn’t significant to Jobe Concrete’s bottom line, according to Billie Mac Jobe, was because another bank fraud was about to start, helping to shore up the Jobes’ finances, according to prosecutors.
The Second Brank Fraud
In 1990, Jobe Concrete purchased El Paso Sand for between $10 and $15 million, giving Jobe Concrete most of the concrete production in El Paso. While Jobe Concrete was purchasing its competitor, an internal auditor for State National Bank was writing internal memorandums advising bank officials that they suspected the Jobes of check-kiting and other bank frauds. The second bank fraud began around 1989.
In 1985 a group of investors formed Texas International Bank. After Texas National Bank objected to the name, the bank was renamed El Paso State Bank. The bank was created to provide banking services to Mexican customers and those doing business in México. In 1991, El Paso State Bank, then the fifth largest bank in El Paso, bought troubled MBank El Paso, then El Paso’s second largest bank. It also changed its name to State National Bank.
On November 19, 1993, an El Paso grand jury issued a sealed 27-count indictment charging five people with defrauding two banks out of $11.5 million. On November 21, the indictment was unsealed and the five defendants surrendered to face criminal charges. For one of the defendants, Billie Mac Jobe, this was the second time he was facing charges for bank fraud since he had pleaded guilty and was sentenced to jail in 1979 for his part in defrauding another bank. Each of the defendants were released on $100,000 unsecured bond each.
This time, Billie Mac Jobe was adamant that the FBI got it wrong, telling the El Paso Herald Post though his lawyer, Richard P. Mesa, “that none of the defendants engaged in any illegal conduct.” The indictment alleged that the Jobes “obtained business loans, only to use the funds to support a massive check-kiting and money laundering scheme.”
Also indicted along with the Jobes were Continental National Bank’s former president Philip Sutton, Stephen Taylor, executive vice president of El Paso State National Bank/Continental National Bank and former senior vice-president and cashier for El Paso State Bank, Fernando Novoa.
At the time of the indictments, Billie Mac Jobe was president of Cal-Tex Spice Co. In March 1990, Cal-Tex Spice Co. Inc. received a $4.5 million loan from Texas Commerce Bank, according to a trust deed filed to secure it. On February 10, 1996, the assets of the spice company were auctioned off. Cal-Tex Spice Co., Inc. forfeited its Texas corporate charter on February 11, 2000 due to a tax forfeiture. Billie Mac Jobe was also part-owner of Jobe Concrete. The president of Jobe Concrete was Stanley Jobe.
The criminal investigation into the Jobes began in 1990, around the time of the multi-million-dollar purchase of El Paso Sand. The FBI had received numerous complaints about them from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and two banks, Continental National Bank and Texas Commerce Bank, as well as the Texas State Department of Banking.
According to prosecutors, “Billie Mac’s check kite was remarkably efficient; unlike the vast majority of check kites, this one not only stayed constantly ahead of the lag but never did self-destruct.” The evidence presented at the trial showed that none of the checks used in the kite were ever returned as insufficient and all the loans used in the bank fraud were paid in full and with interest. Nonetheless, they were found guilty.
FBI Agent Wolverton testified that between December 1, 1989 through March 12, 1990, the check kiting “created the impression that $150,000,000 had been deposited into the Jobe accounts,” but only $20 million of it was real. Wolverton added that from April through June 1991, it looked like the Jobes had $58 million in their accounts when only $13 million existed.
The excess money was used to “finance business ventures for Billie Mac and Stanley,” Wolverton testified. One example Wolverton provided to the jury was the purchase of Baltimore Spice Co. by Cal-Tex Spice Co., owned by Billie Mac Jobe. The $3.5 million price tag paid for the spice company came from only $1,000 that Billie Mac Jobe had used to open an account at Continental National Bank for his other business, Jobe Bar Track Ranch.
Wolverton testified that Billie Mac Jobe “commenced the kite by opening a checking account for the Jobe Bar Track Ranch at CNB.” Before the bank officially opened the account, Billie Mac Jobe wrote a check for $990,000 from the starter checks the bank issued him. The check was deposited at El Paso State Bank. The bank immediately issued a $3,536,347 cashier’s check for the spice company purchase.
But the bank’s president, Steven Taylor, did not document the loan that the bank was using to fund the $3.5 million check until several days later.
Noting that the $990,000 check was written against a $1,000 balance, CNB senior VP, Martha Karlsruher, immediately notified the bank’s president, Philip Sutton, of the problem. Sutton told her it wasn’t a problem because the pending loan would fund the discrepancy. Although the bank loaned Billie Mac Jobe $925,000 on January 8, 1990, Sutton had backdated the loan to cover the account shortfall.
In another instance presented at the hearing, on May 21, 1990, CNB funded a $750,000 loan to Deer Creek Spice Co., which Sutton approved. One of the owners of Deer Creek was Stanley Jobe, who took the loan check and immediately gave it to Billie Mac Jobe to deposit at El Paso State Bank to cover $750,000 in checks issued by the elder Jobe from Jobe Bar Track Ranch to himself. The purpose for the Deer Creek loan was to purchase inventory and not to cover checks at another account.
As pressure mounted against Sutton from several employees’ concerns over the bank transactions, including those from Karlsruher, “he threatened to fire” anyone “who filed a criminal referral on Billie Mac Jobe.” The reason Sutton told Karlsruher, was that a criminal referral “would cause…serious financial harm” to the Jobes.
Testimony at the trial revealed that the “kiting activity” became obvious to several bank employees as it intensified. Karlsruher continued to complain to Sutton about the bank activities, but Sutton kept assuring her that “it was a normal business practice” for companies to operate this way. It was not.
When asked why she had not filed a criminal complaint about what she suspected was bank fraud, Karlsruher responded that she received “a copy of a board of directors resolution that ordered management not to file” a criminal complaint against the Jobes. The chairman of the board at CNB at the time was Jack Cardwell. Mention of his name would later be part of an appeal made after the convictions. Eventually, Karlsruher would participate in filing a criminal referral against the Jobes, court testimony later revealed.
Jobe Concrete’s credit manager grew so concerned about the “suspicious activities” with the Jobe accounts that he “started looking for another job,” eventually quitting his job at Jobe. When asked by the prosecutors if the Jobes had the money to pay for the spice company purchase, Jobe Concrete’s credit manager, Austin Hale, told the jury that “neither Jobe Concrete Products nor Billie Mac had enough” money to pay for it.
After CNB closed the Jobe Bar Track Ranch checking account in June 1990, the bank fraud expanded with loans from other banks and wire transfers used to inflate the bank account balances.
To stay ahead of the float, El Paso State Bank president, Steven Taylor, with the help of bank cashier Fernando Novoa helped by providing immediate credit to bank deposits made by the Jobes. So many wire transfers were happening that Billie Mac Jobe had made himself “a second home” at the El Paso State Bank’s wire transfer room between January and September 1990. What started out as wire transfers of $50,000 a day, quickly jumped to $500,000 and to “a combined daily total of $1,000,000.”
Several bank employees were concerned but were ignored by Taylor and Novoa.
Eventually, the memorandums reaching Taylor from concerned employees grew so much that Taylor “threw them in the trash and said he wanted all the copies out of circulation.” When bank examiners examined the bank transactions, what they found was that “while EPSB was lending Billie Mac and Stanely over $1,000,000 each year, the bank’s average collected balances [in the Jobe accounts] were negative.”
As it became clear that bank examiners and federal officials were investigating the bank transactions, the “expanded check kite came to a crashing halt.”
After Novoa quit working at the bank, he was named President of Cal-Tex Spice. Novoa was known in El Paso’s political circles at the time for his work on the Larry Francis mayoral campaign, and for being on the Thomason Hospital, now the University Medical Center of the El Paso (UMC), board. Novoa was also appointed the chairman of the El Paso International Airport Advisory Board in September 1993 by Francis.
The bank fraud led by the Jobes included obtaining loans from Continental National Bank in El Paso and four other banks in other cities. In one example, Stanley Jobe took out a bank loan and deposited the loan money into his bank account at First National Park Bank in Montana. Stanely Jobe would later transfer the money to Billie Mac Jobe’s account at the same bank. The money would then end up in the company bank account at El Paso State Bank. Billie Mac Jobe would do the same with money from another loan with his Continental Bank account.
In addition to the check-kiting charges, the indictment also charged the defendants with money laundering because, according to the indictment, the illegal bank transactions were used to fund Jobe Concrete. Federal prosecutor Karen Tandy told the judge during a hearing in December “that the bank fraud activity capitalized the company Jobe Concrete.”
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The Trial
Two days after being arrested, the Jobes issued a press release stating that “all checks involved in the transactions were paid in the normal course of business.” It added that the banks “made lots of money” from their banking activities.
On November 24, 1993, the five defendants pleaded not guilty to the 27-count indictment against them. In December 1993, federal officials reduced the amount of the fraud from $11.5 million to $9.5 million.
The trial against the Jobes and their co-defendants began on June 20, 1994. Assistant U.S. Attorney started the testimony in the trial by telling they jury, of seven men and five women, that what they will hear during the trial will be “startling and often ugly.” Al Weisenberger, representing Bille Mac Jobe retorted by telling the jury that “not one cent was lost by any bank or any individual or the U.S. government.” Instead, Weisenberger told the jury that the “banks made money.” He added that federal investigators “wrongly investigated,” the Jobes’ use of “aggressive cash management.” Weisenberger labeled the 19-count indictment as nothing more than a “sheer mass of paper and creativity.”
Martha P. Karlsruher was appointed Vice President and Cashier of Continental National Bank in September 1988. In late 1989, Karlsruher was promoted to senior vice president and cashier of the bank. In two days of testimony on June 20 and 21, 1994, Karlsruher explained to the jury how she, and Continental National Bank board chairman John Wright complained that the Jobes were committing bank fraud.
On Saturday, February 20, 1993, an urgent special meeting was held by the board of directors of Continental National Bank. What was discussed at the unusual Saturday meeting is unknown, but the result was that the bank’s chief executive officer, Philip Sutton, and senior lending officer, Steve Gibbs, both suddenly resigned after the board meeting. Sutton had been at the bank since 1989. In 1992, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a bank regulator, issued a 30-page Consent Order to Continental National Bank outlining 26 bank procedures the bank needed to do to continue operating.
Karlsruher told the jury that she disobeyed an order from the Continental bank’s board of directors to keep the matter quiet, and instead, along with Wright, pushed the FBI to prosecute the Jobes.
Sutton, who had suddenly resigned the year before, was central to the bank fraud, Karlsruher explained to the jury. She told the jury that she resigned in early 1994 because she was being “harassed” by Continental Bank employees.
Jim Darnell, representing Sutton cross examined Karlsruher. Darnell asked if the bank made money from the Jobe loans in 1990. Karlsruher replied that the “loans were paid with interest.” Karlsruher also testified that the reason the bank board decided not to refer the Jobes’ bank fraud to federal officials is because they feared being sued by the Jobes. She then took it upon herself to contact the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and the FBI, with the help of Wright.
The defense team centered their defense on the fact that the banks did not lose money from the Jobe transactions and, instead, made money. El Paso State Bank internal auditor, Diana Vincent, testified that although the bank was making money from the Jobe transactions, she nonetheless grew concerned that the Jobes were involved in check-kiting. She told the jury that one day, “Jobe sent several wire transfers that totaled about $2.6 million” from her bank. She took her concerns to Stephen Taylor, the bank’s vice-president.
Laura Gonzalez Avila, a former Employee of El Paso State Bank’s wire transfer room testified that she noticed “a steady increase” of wire transfers being made by Billie Mac Jobe to out of town banks.
The court hearing revealed that the money being shuffled between banks by the Jobes was used by them to make tax payments for their companies, pay utility bills, meet payroll, purchase livestock for the ranch and make donations to charitable organizations.
By the time the jury started deliberating the case, only nine counts remained from the original 26-count indictment. The other counts had been dismissed by the judge as the case progressed.
Guilty
After almost two weeks of court testimony and two days of deliberation, on July 1, 1994, the jury found Billie Mac Jobe and his son, Stanley Pruet Jobe, guilty of bank fraud. The jury also found local bank officials, Fernando Novoa, Philip Mark Sutton and Stephen Taylor guilty of bank fraud.
Billie Mac Jobe was found guilty of bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. His son, Stanley Jobe, was convicted of bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and three counts of making false bank entries. Novoa was found guilty of bank fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, while Taylor was found guilty of bank fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of making a false bank entry. The final defendant, Sutton, was found guilty of bank fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and two counts of making false bank entries. Each of the defendants faced up to 30 years in federal prison.
The jury wasn’t initially ready to convict the defendants. One juror, John A. Shamaley told the El Paso Herald Post that the jury was ready to acquit Billie Mac Jobe on one count involving the $990,000 loan. Another juror, Hector Ruiz added that many times the jury were locked “11-to-one a lot of times.” To convict, all 12 jurors needed to agree. Both said that the prosecutors did not offer “a very solid case.” But both criticized the Jobes for not explaining “their financial dealings from the witness stand.”
Another juror, Carlos Campos, said that the “jury was troubled by inconsistencies in the purpose of the loans,” and how the money was used.
Carlos Villa, representing Taylor, said he was “astounded by the jury verdict,” because he felt that the “evidence was so overwhelming that there was no intent to defraud.”
Sentenced To Jail
On September 2, 1994, U.S. District Court Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth sentenced Billie Mac Jobe to 18 months in prison and fined him $30,000. This was the second bank fraud conviction for the elder Jobe. Hudspeth also sentenced Stanley Jobe to five months in prison, five months in a halfway house, and fined him $10,000. Former El Paso State Bank employees, Fernando Novoa and Stanley Taylor, and Continental Bank’s Philip Mark Sutton were each sentenced to 10 months in prison. All faced three months of supervised release after prison.
Billie Mac Jobe emotionally told the judge at sentencing that he did not “believe any of these four other men would be here if it were not for my actions and bad judgement.” The elder Jobe added, “my son shouldn’t be here today,” adding that he would “have to live with that for the rest” of his life.
Luis Islas, representing Novoa, told the judge that “there was no conspiracy whatsoever.” Alicia Chacon, Pete Duarte, Larry Francis and Ted Houghton publicly supported Novoa.
On March 8, 1996, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions for all the defendants, including the Jobes, although it did modify some of the counts against Stanley Jobe and Novoa. Nonetheless, they remained convicted of bank fraud. One of the reasons for the appeal was that juror misconduct had occurred because one of the jurors, John A. Shamaley, had found out that the elder Jobe had been previously found guilty of fraud charges. Shamaley was told by a relative about the prior conviction after telling his relative that his boss, Jack Cardwell, had been mentioned during the trial. The Appeal Court reasoned that Shamaley learning about the prior conviction did not prejudice the jury. The Appeals Court also ruled that complaints about jury instructions, separating the trial by defendant and other technical complaints had no impact on the jury finding the parties guilty.
On December 28, 1998, Harry Lee Hudspeth agreed to grant Stanley Jobe an early release from the three-year probation he imposed on him when he sentenced him. Stanley Jobe served slightly more than a year of supervised release after leaving jail, instead of the three-years he was sentenced to originally.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Moves To Blacklist Jobe Concrete
On February 27, 1996, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a letter recommending that Jobe Concrete be prohibited from doing business with the federal government because of the bank fraud convictions of Billie Mac and Stanley Jobe, the principals of the concrete company. The company was supplying concrete to Holloman Air Force Base under a $22.3 million contract. In response to the attempt to blacklist them, Stanley Jobe told the Albuquerque Journal that he “was certainly going to contest” the attempt to debar his company from doing work for the federal government because the conviction had “nothing to do with government contracts or government work.” The investigation by the Army began after John D. Stowe, president of Valley Transit Mix of Las Cruces brought the Jobe convictions to the attention of New Mexico congressional representatives.
Stanley Jobe Seeks Pardon From Bill Clinton
Clemency requests in the last two years of Bill Clinton’s second term had intensified significantly. Of the many pardon requests submitted to Clinton, one came from Martie Jobe, Stanley’s wife. She made it a personal mission to have her husband pardoned.
Presidential pardons usually followed the route of submitting the paperwork, having the FBI review the request, followed by a review by prosecutors to reach the point of a recommendation for the president to issue the pardon. As Clinton was leaving office, he issued 176 pardons, many controversial, in nine days. Instead of the normal process, pardon seekers were going straight to the White House bypassing the established process.
Although some of Clinton’s pardons were controversial, the number of pardons he issued were comparable to previous presidents. Martie Jobe told The New York Times on January 29, 2001 that she “decided to do everything she could to help her husband, Stanley, get a pardon” for his bank fraud conviction. Martie Jobe told the newspaper that although she balked at the price tag of $200,000 up front from John Bryant, a Dallas congressman, she, nonetheless sought help from “another person with administration connections, who in turn made contact with a White House official,” for help with getting her husband pardoned. She admitted to the newspaper that “it was all kind of mysterious.” Stanley Jobe was pardoned in January 2001.
The 115-page pardon packet submitted to the White House contains court transcripts of the case, a list of $277,281.04 charitable donations made by Stanley Jobe since his conviction, and several character affidavits made in support of Stanley Jobe’s request for the pardon.
One of the character affidavits was provided by J.A. Cardwell. Cardwell wrote that he found Stanley Jobe to be “of high moral standards and with the highest integrity.” Two bank officials with Norwest Bank and Sierra Bank also submitted letters of support. Silvestre Reyes also submitted a letter of support. In it he wrote that Stanley Jobe “contributes generously to various community and charitable contributions including El Paso Schools, [sic] the University of Texas at El Paso, Keep El Paso Beautiful, Race for the Cure, local police and sheriff’s associations,” among other organizations.
Another letter of support was submitted by Dolores Briones as the county judge. In it, she wrote that “rarely would I write in [sic] behalf of someone so convicted.” She added that Stanley Jobe “has earned and continues to maintain a reputation as one of our most influential and respected citizens.” In 2013, Briones was sentenced to two-and-half years in federal prison for embezzling a federal program.
Two political party leaders also submitted letters of support. The first was submitted by then El Paso County Democratic Party chair, Mary Bowles-Grijalva. In it she wrote that “Mr. Jobe has an unimpeachable reputation” in the city. The chair of the El Paso County Republican Party, Kenneth R. Carr, also submitted a letter of support. In it, Carr wrote that he “personally consider[ed] both his [Stanley Jobe] indictment and his conviction to have been travesties of justice.” Carr added that “Stanley Jobe is an outstanding member of this community and an honorable man.”
The Jobes have been frequent fixtures in El Paso’s political scene for decades.
Political Campaign Contributions
Stanley Jobe has been a frequent contributor to political campaigns in El Paso. His father, Billie Mac Jobe, also contributed to local races. During the city council seat between Jimmy Goldman and Bill Squires, the elder Jobe made a $100 campaign contribution to Squires. In that race, the largest contributions were for $500. In 1988, Billie Mac Jone made one of his largest campaign contributions to Mary Anne Bramblett in her campaign against John McKellips’ 41st district judge seat.
Other contributions included $250 to Tony Ponce for his 1989 city council race, as well as $5,000 to Jim Mattox. Bille Mac Jobe helped to run Mattox’s El Paso campaign. Most recently, Stanley Jobe made $14,500 in campaign contributions to various city council candidates in the last elections.
Mayor Makes Jobe Example Of What Is Wrong With El Paso
In 2001, Texas Monthly author S. C. Gwynne asked readers if “the populist mayor of El Paso” was “trying to upend the old-line anglo establishment?” Gwynne was referring to Ray Caballero who was in his only term as mayor. Gwynne started out the article by illustrating a verbal image of “an enormous, jagged, ocher-and-sand-colored scar” on the mountain. The “scar” on the mountain was McKelligon Canyon Quarry, owned by Jobe Concrete. Gwynne expanded his word imagery by writing that the quarry was “a monument to the sort of rawboned, laissez-faire mercantile capitalism” that Caballero was trying to end.
Jobe’s quarry had become “the pluperfect symbol of his [Caballero’s] crusade to transform this sprawling, poverty-ridden border city into a smoke-free, smart-growth, high-wage, ecologically pristine health mecca.”
Stanley Jobe and Jobe Concrete had become the “poster boy” of what Ray Caballero wanted to change about El Paso to remake the city into another Portland Oregon. Using environmental laws and municipal regulations, Caballero wanted Jobe’s quarry out of El Paso.
Stanley Jobe told Texas Monthly that Caballero’s “intentions are not honorable,” that he was “sending inspectors” in an attempt “to regulate” Jobe Concrete “out of business.” As the Texas Monthly acknowledged, Jobe Concrete was exactly the business that Caballero was proposing for El Paso’s renaissance. At the time Jobe Concrete employed over 600 El Pasoans.
As the result of Caballero’s onslaught against him, Stanley Jobe publicly challenged Caballero before the city council, in the news media and at the ballot box. In the end, unlike Asarco, Caballero’s other target, Jobe Concrete, remained and Caballero went on to lose his reelection campaign, making him a one-term mayor.
After losing his reelection, Caballero sent an email to his supporters where he listed the reasons why he was a one-term mayor. Among the 36-bullet point list of those Caballero blamed for his loss was Jobe Concrete. The list came to be known as Caballero’s “enemies list.”
This article is based on public records, court testimony and documents, and personal interviews.