El Paso City Council candidate Shawn Nixon allegedly wrote $10k in bad checks to cleaning firm

UPDATE: El Paso police on Monday provided additional details on the arrest of City Council candidate Shawn Nixon and released his jail mugshot photo (see below at bottom of article).

Investigators said they obtained a warrant for Nixon's arrest on allegations that he wrote over $10,000 in bad checks to a cleaning company he had hired over the summer.

"Nixon repeatedly paid the company for services with checks that were returned unpaid," according to a police incident report.

ORIGINAL REPORT: EL PASO, Texas -- El Paso City Council District 4 candidate Shawn Nixon was arrested Friday on allegations of bad check writing, police confirmed to ABC-7.

He was taken into custody Friday morning at the El Paso Police Department's Northeast Regional Command.

Nixon was in the process of being booked into the downtown jail on a charge of theft of service, with the value of that theft placed between $2,500 and $30,000.

Nixon's bond was set at $20,000, and a police spokesman said Friday that additional charges were pending amid an ongoing investigation.

The 21-year-old Nixon has been accused in at least eight police reports filed over the past two months with funding his campaign by writing thousands of dollars worth of bounced checks, El Paso Matters recently reported. It cited copies of police documents obtained under the Texas Public Information Act.

Business owners claiming Nixon defrauded them say they provided cleaning services for his northeast El Paso campaign headquarters and printed his campaign banners and yard signs, among other work.

Nixon is one of five candidates on the ballot for the District 4 council seat. In an interview with El Paso Matters prior to his arrest, Nixon blamed a campaign worker for issuing the bad checks without his knowledge.

“I didn’t have no knowledge of any of this taking place,” Nixon said.