San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said Tuesday he has suspended a handful of affiliated tow truck operations from doing business with the city over alleged illegal activities.
The suspensions immediately bar the companies and the people running them from receiving city funding.
Chiu initiated the suspensions for Auto Towing LLC, Abigail Fuentes, Auto Towing CEO Juan Fuentes, Jose Badillo, Jose's Towing LLC and Specialty Towing and Recovery Inc.
While none of the companies has done business with the city in the past, Auto Towing submitted an unsuccessful bid in 2023 to provide towing services and roadside assistance for city-owned vehicles and SFMTA buses, according to Chiu's office.
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Auto Towing is accused of illegally towing cars from a private parking lot, limiting the times vehicles could be retrieved and pressuring owners -- primarily Spanish- and Cantonese-speaking residents -- to fork over cash to get their cars back, Chiu's office said in a news release.
Fuentes and Badillo are also facing criminal charges associated with an alleged scheme to defraud Medi-Cal, and Fuentes is also accused of allegedly receiving CalFresh and CalWORKs benefits to which she was not entitled, according to Chiu's office.
"Auto Towing intentionally misled and scammed people out of hundreds of dollars by illegally towing cars and making them hard to retrieve," Chiu said. "Now we also know that they took advantage of the public and defrauded our safety net programs. Fuentes and Badillo have demonstrated a clear pattern of predatory behavior designed to enrich themselves at the expense of the most vulnerable among us."
