A well-known political family in Edinburg had seven of their own arrested for illegal voting and arraigned in a Hidalgo County Courtroom Thursday morning.
For the first time, the Gutiérrez Family is breaking their silence in a CBS 4 Exclusive, to talk about the voter fraud allegations.
“We know everything about voting, well we thought we did,” said Cynthia Maldonado, who has ties to seven out of the 15 charged Thursday.
Now, the family has been slapped with illegal voting charges and one of them, Araceli Montoya Gutiérrez, was given an additional charge of organized crime.
“That’s what hurt us the most, that they got our aunt, and they put her in jail for organized crime. She doesn’t even know how to read or write,” said Maldonado.
The family tells CBS 4 the charges are a misunderstanding.
“My aunt gave my family permission to use her address and when my mom died, we all used to get our mail at my mom’s house, but then she died so then we moved to all use my sister’s address,” said Maldonado.
For the past 50 years, that’s how they always voted.
“We didn’t even know it was voter fraud.”
They say if it was illegal voting, they’ll take the hits, but they want others locked up too.
“We’re going to clear our name, because if we’re gonna go down, a lot of people are going to go down too.”
A pre-trial hearing is set for January 3, 2020.
