Ex-Marco councilor Victor Rios gets two years probation in condo election fraud case

Former Marco Island City Councilor Victor Rios was sentenced to two years of probation on Wednesday for committing personal information fraud while allegedly rigging a 2019 condo board election.

Rios, 80, was found guilty of three fraud charges and cleared of two counts of forging a public record. Judge Chris Brown withheld adjudication, meaning that Rios will not have a criminal conviction on his record.

Rios was elected to the Marco Island council in 2014 and resigned mid-term in October 2020, citing "personal reasons." Four months later, authorities charged him with fraud for allegedly fabricating votes to remain on the board of the Belize Condominium Association.

Rios' defense attorney Seth Kolton did not immediately return a request for comment. In May, shortly after the verdict, he expressed disappointment with the convictions but said he and his client respect the jury's decision.

“Our argument was Mr. Rios did not engage in the conduct for which he was charged," Kolton told the Marco Eagle. “We were very glad that Mr. Rios was exonerated on the forgery charges, which I think were really the more serious of the charges because those really speak to the core of an election.”

The former councilor denied wrongdoing in a 2019 interview with The Marco Eagle.

"I swear on the Bible I have never committed an illegal act," Rios said at the time.

Rios allegedly altered ballots to make it appear that condo residents who did not vote in the election had voted for him. The election results showed a 97 percent voting rate, which one resident cited as suspicious in a complaint to the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

The election was contentious, and two residents asserted their right to inspect the ballots, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation.

The residents found that some of the ballot envelopes appeared to bear the same handwriting and 12 people who had purportedly voted for Rios told investigators that they had not in fact voted, according to the FDLE report. Forensic testing allegedly found Rios' DNA on the outer envelopes of the contested ballots.

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that the judge withheld adjudication in this case, meaning that Victor Rios was not formally convicted.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Ex-Marco councilor Victor Rios gets probation in condo election fraud case