_________________
_________________
_________________
_________________
June 2019 – La Luz Del Mundo leader Naasón Joaquín García is indicted on 36 felony counts, including human trafficking, child pornography, and the rape of a minor. The sweeping case makes national headlines, putting the church and its leadership under intense public scrutiny.
2021 – Despite the highly publicized charges, current Central Basin Director Juan Garza, through his private firm Six-Heron, takes La Luz on as a paying client. His decision to represent the church occurs during the height of García’s criminal proceedings, raising questions about judgment and oversight.
January–March 2022 – Garza admits that his compensation from La Luz sharply increased during this period. He acknowledges earning more money in just three months than in all of 2021 combined, signaling the church had become one of his most lucrative clients.
June 2022 – García pleads guilty in California court to sexually abusing minors and receives a prison sentence of more than 16 years. Garza’s work with La Luz ends only three months earlier, a timeline that erases his claim of being distanced from the church at the time of conviction.
August 2022 – Garza files a Candidate Form 700 with the City of Bellflower but fails to disclose La Luz as a client. The omission violates financial disclosure requirements designed to keep public officials transparent and accountable. Click here to see document.
2023–2024 – Los Cerritos Community News confronts Garza about the omissions on multiple Form 700 filings. He dismisses the failures to report La Luz as “unintentional errors,” yet later contradicts himself in follow-up texts that confirm the financial significance of the church as a client.
September 2025 – Federal prosecutors in New York unseal a sweeping indictment charging García and five others with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The filing leaves no daylight between García and the church, describing La Luz itself as the engine of systemic abuse, coverups, and intimidation.
September 27, 2025
By Brian Hews • [email protected] • Follow
Central Basin Municipal Water District Director Juan Garza’s already extremely troubling former relationship with La Luz Del Mundo took an even darker turn after federal prosecutors in New York last week unsealed a new sweeping indictment against the church’s leader, Naasón Joaquín García, and others, charging them with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking.
The indictment left no daylight between García and the church itself.
According to prosecutors, La Luz Del Mundo’s leadership actively enabled abuse, destroyed evidence, and pressured victims to sign false declarations. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton put it bluntly: García and his enablers “exploited the faith of their followers to prey upon them,” leveraging religious power and financial muscle to silence those who tried to come forward.
García, already serving more than 16 years in a California prison after pleading guilty in 2022 to sexually abusing minors, now faces fresh federal charges alleging a decades-long criminal enterprise.
The indictment reads like a Jeffrey Epstein narrative, accusing García and his inner circle of producing child pornography, coercing minors into sex acts, and intimidating victims into silence.
And Assistant U.S. Atty. Elizabeth Espinosa said there was an “enormous amount of electronic evidence ” from the 2022 case.
For Central Basin Director Juan Garza, the new charges collapse the defense he offered Los Cerritos Community News last year when confronted with evidence that his company, Six-Heron, represented La Luz Del Mundo between January 2021 and March 2022 — squarely during the height of García’s criminal proceedings.
Central Basin Dir. Juan Garza’s Company Represented La Luz Del Mundo Just Before Leader Pled Guilty to Copulation With a Minor
At the time, Garza dismissed concerns, calling García a “prophet” comparable to the Pope and insisting he was working for the church, not the man. He even lauded La Luz for its incredible faith-based charity work throughout the world.
“The client of my former employer and me was in fact the church itself, La Luz Del Mundo, and its millions of followers and believers focused on their incredible faith-based charity work throughout the world, and not the prophet himself,” wrote Garza.
___________________________
Text message from Garza to LCCN showing Garza saying “the client was the church itself.”
But prosecutors now allege the church itself was the engine of the abuse. The coverups, the intimidation, the retaliation — all of it came from the very institution Garza admittedly represented for profit. His carefully crafted line between church and prophet had collapsed.
The timeline is damning and so was the attempted cover-up.
Six-Heron has been in operation since 2018, well before García’s 2019 arrest on 36 felony counts, including human trafficking, child pornography, and forcible rape of a minor.
By 2021, the charges were widely publicized, yet Garza still agreed to represent the church. LCCN later discovered his work for La Luz through financial disclosure forms he filed when appointed to the Central Basin Water Board.
When asked, Garza admitted that he had worked for La Luz until just three months before García’s guilty plea in 2022 and even acknowledged that his compensation had increased. In a series of contradictory statements and texts to LCCN, Garza admitted that he was paid more for just three months of work in 2022 than for all of 2021, indicating that the church was one of his most lucrative clients.
But it gets murkier for Garza; a closer examination showed that Garza tried to hide the fact that La Luz was his client on his financial disclosure forms submitted to the city of Bellflower when he ran and won a council seat.
On multiple financial disclosure forms — including his 2021 and 2022 Form 700 filings — Garza failed to list La Luz as a client. When confronted, he called the omissions “unintentional errors.”
Garza’s August 2022 SEI submitted to Bellflower showing his “non-inclusion” of La Luz Del Mundo as a client.
Garza’s text to LCCN citing “unintentional error” leaving La Luz Del Mundo off his Schecule A-2
But was it really “unintentional.” On Garza’s 2021 Statement of Economic Interests, LCCN found La Luz Del Mundo missing once again.
When pressed on the second omission, Garza spun an implausible explanation, claiming he had worked for the church the entire year in 2021 but somehow made more in just three months of 2022, ending his work only three months before García pleaded guilty.
That’s not just another excuse — it’s a violation of FPPC disclosure law. State law is clear: if you earn more than $10,000 from a client, you must report it on your Statement of Economic Interests. Garza is well aware of the law, he is a paid Sacramento lobbyist and also has held public office and filed many SEI’s. Yet he failed to report La Luz del Mundo on his financial disclosure reports for two consecutive years.
Garza has tried to dismiss his ties to La Luz, telling LCCN that his “contracted relationship ended way before [García’s] conviction.” The truth is that it ended only three months before the guilty plea.
With this new indictment, Garza’s 2024 “I was working for the church, not the leader” story to LCCN is shattered. Garza wasn’t just doing business with a church leader under suspicion — he was paid (very well) to represent a religious empire now accused of being built on systemic child abuse, intimidation, and exploitation and bailed out of the just before judgement day.
Garza ignored repeated LCCN texts and emails and refused to say whether federal prosecutors or the FBI had contacted him.
Former Central Basin GM Dr. Alejandro Rojas, illegally fired by Garza after Garza called a Brown-violating, no-public-notice special meeting without the board president’s approval, told LCCN, “Juan Garza’s corruption runs deep — from dodging state taxes to failing to pay fees in Bellflower to breaking laws at Central Basin. He’s made a career of raiding agency resources to punish staff who won’t follow his illegal directives and to attack anyone he brands an enemy. Worst of all, his paid alliance with a convicted child predator exposes his true values: power over people, self-interest over justice, corruption over service.”
Although the latest revelations top the list of infractions, this is not the first time Garza has skirted the law. For three years as a Bellflower city councilman, including one year as mayor, Garza failed to pay even the nominal business license fees for his company Six-Heron, which he operates out of his Bellflower home. After Los Cerritos Community News exposed the violation, Garza finally paid the overdue fees—six months later.
LCCN also exclusively reported that Garza was hit with a $50,000 state tax lien. Reaching that stage is no small matter; if a taxpayer is working in good faith to resolve a dispute, the state almost always offers installment plans rather than immediately filing a lien against a home. Yet officials pursued the lien anyway, suggesting Garza was uncooperative or in default.
Only a year after the lien was filed, records show the debt was suddenly paid in full. Garza will not answer questions from LCCN how he managed to clear the entire $50,000 balance so quickly.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.