The former state senator of Cuban origin Frank Artiles was found guilty of violating several election laws in Florida to manipulate the results of the 2020 elections.
Artiles, from the Republican Party, was found guilty of making excessive contributions ($26,812.92) to political campaigns, conspiring to make illegal contributions, and attempting to forge a candidate's oath form, all third-degree felonies.
The 51-year-old politician was only acquitted of the charge of falsifying a voter registration form.
Artiles was arrested in 2021 for allegedly financing a ghost candidate in the Florida elections.
He was accused of planning and financing a false candidate to manipulate voters in the elections by paying a man to run as an independent candidate. The goal was to confuse voters and divert votes from the Democratic candidate.
The Cuban American introduced a "ghost candidate," a 55-year-old businessman named Alex Rodríguez, whom he promised to pay $50,000 to enter the race for the 37th district of the state Senate. The confusion arises because the Democratic candidate was José Javier Rodríguez, and having the same last name made it easy for voters to get confused.
The trick worked. The victory went to the Republican Ileana García, who defeated her Democratic rival José Javier Rodríguez by just 32 votes.
The ghost candidate Alex Rodríguez, with no experience in politics, obtained 6,000 votes. In 2021, he was arrested along with Artiles, pleaded guilty, and agreed to testify against him in the judicial process that has just reached a verdict.
In the elections in the United States, it is not illegal to plan for a false candidate, but financing it is.
In 2017, Frank Artiles resigned from his position in the Florida Senate after becoming embroiled in two scandals: one for making racist insults about several of his colleagues and another related to irregularities in hiring inexperienced maids to work for him.
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