Jurors heard two sharply contrasting portrayals of Stockton Unified School District Trustee AngelAnn Flores on Tuesday as closing arguments began in her felony trial.
While the prosecution cast her as a dishonest politician who defrauded an insurance provider and misused public funds, the defense portrayed her as a whistleblower targeted by a retaliatory and flawed investigation.
Flores, who remains on the school board, is facing three felony charges following a San Joaquin County grand jury indictment in January. Prosecutors allege she filed an insurance claim for a car crash that happened before her policy took effect and misused a district-issued credit card, resulting in charges of embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds.
Flores has denied the charges.
Prosecution cites texts, recorded interview as key evidence
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Deputy Rocky Bulen, the lead investigator in the case, was expected to provide follow-up testimony before the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments. However, Bulen did not take the witness stand, and both sides rested their cases shortly after the proceedings began.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Donald Vaughn first addressed the charge of making a false or fraudulent claim, which stemmed from a minor car crash involving Flores and then-coworker Randy Gaines in 2022.
The collision occurred at the UPS facility in Lathrop, Flores’ workplace. She reported to Sentry Insurance, her car insurance company, that her Hyundai struck an unoccupied Dodge sedan in the parking lot.
Vaughn presented several documents to the jury related to the charge, including a calendar that showed Flores purchased a six-month insurance policy with Sentry Insurance on Nov. 15, 2022. It also showed that three days later, on Nov. 18, a claim was filed related to Flores’ crash, and photos were submitted on Nov. 21.
Vaughn played an audio recording of Flores’ Dec. 22, 2022 interview with Andrew White, a special investigator for Sentry Insurance.
In the recording, Flores could be heard telling White that she knew the report “seemed a little odd” because she had only had insurance for three days before reporting the incident. She said she had just gotten a new job and wanted to take care of her insurance and registration.
Vaughn told jurors that Flores doubled down on the “fraud” and “lies” during her interview with White, in which she repeatedly stated the crash occurred on Nov. 18, 2022. He also presented several text messages between Flores and Gaines that were introduced during the trial.
“That is insurance fraud,” Vaughn said, adding that it did not matter if Keona Morris, the owner of the vehicle Gaines was driving, received the $2,010.68 payout from Sentry Insurance, as it was money Flores did not have to pay for repairs.
The second part of the prosecution’s closing argument focused on the embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds charges.
Vaughn presented jurors with several of Flores’ receipts, along with entries from her cellphone calendar for the same day, to determine whether she made the purchases while conducting district business, as allowed under the credit card policy.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors had not given an exact dollar amount for how much money they alleged Flores embezzled.
“There’s no monetary amount … that does not exist,” Vaughn told the jurors. “You misuse public money, and it’s proven, you’re guilty.”
On Tuesday, prosecutors disclosed to the jury for the first time the total amount of fraud and misuse they’re accusing Flores of: $669.86 for her “personal benefit” and $538 in combined charges for meals Flores purchased for Stockton Unified parents and students during a Long Beach conference and a Monterey field trip.
Vaughn also doubled down on his claim that a $140.20 gratuity charge included on the receipt for the Long Beach dinner was improper because the district’s credit card policy prohibits tips.
“I’m not saying she’s a bad person for doing this — buying food for kids,” Vaughn said, but he emphasized that district policies and procedures needed to be followed.
Israel Gonzalez, who served as Stockton Unified’s director of language development in 2023, testified on July 3 that district leadership was aware of and approved the plan to take families to the Long Beach dinner, and that gratuity was automatically added because of the party’s size. The receipt showed “$0” written in the tip section.
Defense argues government has failed to meet burden of proof
Natalie Bowman, one of Flores’ attorneys, told jurors they are not expected to know the truth — especially when witnesses from the same department provided conflicting testimony — but to answer one question: “Has the government done its job?”
Bowman suggested that the prosecution’s case was “insufficient” and “politically motivated,” pointing to inconsistencies in witness accounts and critical omissions in the evidence. She scrutinized investigators’ use of Cellebrite-extracted PDF transcripts instead of original phone content, arguing that the files were editable.
Bowman noted that Bulen and San Joaquin County Sheriff’s deputy Colton Mitchell previously testified there was no chain-of-custody documentation detailing who handled Flores’ devices. She also pointed out that prosecutors excluded Flores’ Stockton Unified Google calendar — an account she said tracked official district business — instead presenting only two other calendars that lacked that documentation.
“Sometimes the devil’s in the details,” Bowman said, adding that even small details matter when attempting to prosecute someone for multiple felonies.
Bowman then focused on the search warrant authored by Bulen in November 2023, which accused Flores of Brown Act violations and witness intimidation. It also alleged that she conspired with Don Shalvey, then CEO of San Joaquin A+, and real estate developer Fritz Grupe to eliminate construction fees and increase the developer’s profits.
Bowman noted that Bulen testified those claims were unsubstantiated.
“It does raise the question if they have substantiated these claims,” Bowman said.
Bowman shifted her attention to the insurance fraud charge, saying the evidence was contradictory and insufficient. She questioned why the Sentry Insurance paid the claim, noting previous testimony from a Sentry official: “Sentry doesn’t pay unless Sentry owes.”
Bowman said no reimbursement was ever requested by the insurance company, and the California Department of Insurance and the National Insurance Crime Bureau declined to pursue the case. She said there was no referral to the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office, and local authorities only became aware of the accident after the search warrant was executed.
Bowman also said there was a “gaping hole” in the prosecution’s case because they did not call a witness from Sentry Insurance to testify about the insurance policy, even though the district attorney’s office flew in other witnesses from out of state for the trial.
“The issues raised here exist throughout the rest of this case,” Bowman said.
Lead defense attorney Tori Verber Salazar responded to the embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds charges with a rebuttal, highlighting inconsistencies between how district policies are written and how they are actually enforced.
Verber Salazar accused the prosecution of presenting “false evidence.” She showed the jury the bottom half of the receipt for the $46.26 purchase from Chick-fil-A, which prosecution referenced in its closing arguments. The receipt showed the DoorDash order was delivered to Stockton Unified headquarters, contradicting claims that the purchase was unrelated to district business.
“When you put on evidence, you need to tell the truth,” Verber Salazar said. “That’s a misrepresentation of the evidence … we don’t do that in the court of law.”
Verber Salazar said the prosecution’s claim that Flores exceeded the limit on certain charges was a “bald-faced lie,” citing conflicting testimony from Stockton Unified business officials about what the limit actually was.
Verber Salazar said testimony from Suzanne Anderson, an assistant principal at Jane Frederick High School, and Gonzalez showed the Long Beach and Monterey expenditures were above board. She noted that Bulen did not interview either of them during his investigation because “that didn’t fit the narrative.”
Verber Salazar also said Bulen did not interview Christina Alejo, the superintendent’s executive assistant, or Sofima Ibarra, a district accounting manager who oversees trustee credit card use — both of whom were called as witnesses by the prosecution. She said he testified that he did not read the grand jury reports or the FCMAT report and that he made an error on the first page of his report by mistakenly listing 209 Times contributor Frank Gayaldo as the reporting party.
Verber Salazar said the men alleged to be part of a conspiracy with Flores in the search warrant were never interviewed by investigators.
“The job here is to get to the truth of the matter,” Verber Salazar said, not conduct “a piss-poor investigation.”
Verber Salazar pointed out numerous credit card charges by other trustees, including a $427 Verizon payment for former Area 3 Trustee Alicia Rico. She also cited several charges by former Area 4 Trustee Ray Zulueta, including a $130.45 payment at Market Tavern on Sept. 3, 2021; a $216.91 Costco purchase on Aug. 8, 2022; and a $143 payment at Mountain Mike’s on Nov. 16, 2023.
“You can’t have one set of rules for my client and another for everyone else,” Verber Salazar said.
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Closing arguments for the defense were scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in Department 6D of San Joaquin County Superior Court, followed by the prosecution’s rebuttal.
Record reporter Hannah Workman covers news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at hworkman@recordnet.com or on Twitter @byhannahworkman. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.
This article originally appeared on The Record: Burden of proof at center of closing arguments in Stockton Unified Trustee AngelAnn Flores’ trial
Reporting by Hannah Workman, The Stockton Record / The Record
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