attempting to frighten Valarie Frausto<\/a>, who was the San Antonio Fire Department\u2019s interim deputy chief at the time, out of applying for the fire chief\u2019s position.<\/p>\nThe remaining charges accuse Steele of conducting the same act on a separate woman with \u201cintent to harm of defraud\u201d her, according to an affidavit.<\/p>\n
Steele faces the following six Class A misdemeanor charges:<\/p>\n
Three counts of online impersonation<\/p>\n
Three counts of impersonating a private investigator<\/p>\n
If convicted, Steele could face jail time and a fine determined by a judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe newly filed charges reflect the seriousness of the alleged actions and the importance of holding individuals accountable, particularly when the evidence shows laws were clearly violated,\u201c Frausto said in an email to KSAT.<\/p>\n
KSAT reached out to Steele\u2019s lawyer for comment but had not received a response as of Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
San Antonio fire union President Joe Jones sent the following statement to KSAT on Monday: <\/p>\n
The San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association is thankful our District Attorney\u2019s office continues to pursue justice in this case. The environment Mr. Steele and his associates created within our department was an unhealthy and extremely toxic situation that our Firefighters and Paramedics were forced to endure. While these new charges do not address the multiple perversions of professionalism, high standards, and subcultural norms that occurred and persist to this day,\u00a0we sincerely hope Fire Chief Frausto will feel some level of satisfaction in knowing that legal justice is still a possibility.<\/p>\n
Joe Jones, San Antonio Fire Union President<\/p>\n
More coverage of this story on KSAT:<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The former president of the San Antonio firefighters union is facing multiple new charges involving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[72769,633,82,84,83,72768,58352,51314],"class_list":["post-288776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-chris-steele","tag-safd","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-sapffa","tag-valerie-frausto","tag-we-follow-through"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}