The president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board and his cousin were charged Wednesday in an alleged money-laundering scheme to hide the source of nearly $25,000 he claimed in campaign contributions, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced.

LAUSD President Refugio “Ref” Rodriguez and Elizabeth Tinajero Melendrez were each charged with one felony count of conspiracy to commit assumed name contribution and 25 misdemeanor counts of assumed name contribution, according to the DA’s office. Rodriguez, 46, also faces one felony count each of perjury and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument.

Assumed name contributions happen when one person tells another to make a campaign contribution and supplies the money for that contribution. The process can be used to circumvent rules on contribution limits and to make one appear to have more support than he or she has.

Rodriguez announced in November 2014 that he was running for the school board and raised more than $50,000 during his first campaign reporting period that ended Dec. 31, 2014, according to the district attorney’s office.

In total, 25 donors, most of them family and friends, were allegedly paid back $24,250. The donors’ names were listed on a campaign finance report that was allegedly signed by Rodriguez under the penalty of perjury and submitted to the commission, prosecutors said.

Over a 22-day period in December 2014, nearly half the campaign contributions received by Rodriguez were allegedly fraudulent because Rodriguez and Melendrez reimbursed those who gave them, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Rodriguez represents Board District 5, an eastern portion of the school district that stretches from Eagle Rock to South Gate.

If convicted on the felony counts, Rodriguez faces a possible maximum sentence of four years and four months in local custody, which could include jail or house arrest. Melendrez, 45, faces up to three years in local custody.

Rodriguez issued a statement early Wednesday evening, saying, “This decision by the District Attorney comes after attempts by my legal team and me to resolve these issues with the Los Angeles Ethics Commission for over two years.

“As the product of an immigrant family, nobody has more respect for the integrity of the American justice system than I do,” Rodriguez said. “I have cooperated with authorities and hope these issues will be resolved expeditiously and fairly.”

Earlier Wednesday, Rodriguez and Melendrez appeared in court in downtown Los Angeles. But their arraignment was continued until Oct. 24, said Greg Risling, spokesman for the LA district attorney’s office.

Both defendants stood with their attorneys as Superior Court Judge Deborah Brazil rejected a prosecution request for bail and allowed them to remain free on their own recognizance. Brazil did order that their passports be surrendered at their next court appearance in October.

At the courthouse, both defendants declined comment, allowing their attorneys to speak for them.

“We’re going to come back to court in a couple of weeks and see where things stand,” Rodriguez’s attorney, Daniel Nixon, said outside court. “My client intends to go back to work for the LAUSD tomorrow and continue to do the job he was elected to do.”

“This is much ado about nothing,” Melendrez’s attorney, Mark Werksman, said outside court. “We are surprised this has risen to the level of a criminal prosecution.” Werksman said it was “mystifying” that county prosecutors would bring a case “over such a small amount of money so long ago.”

The investigation began in March 2015 when the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission received a whistleblower complaint about Rodriguez’s alleged fundraising activities.

The ethics commission is pursuing its own administrative hearing process on the allegations. Rodriguez and Melendrez are each charged with 25 acts of laundering funds into Rodriguez’s primary campaign committee during his 2015 campaign, the commission said. The commission said the maximum penalty it can levy is $5,000 per violation.

During the 2015 election, when Rodriguez was elected to the board, campaign contributions to an LAUSD board candidate couldn’t exceed $1,100 per person, according to the accusations filed by the ethics commission.

The ethics commission said that shortly after starting his campaign in November 2014 for a school board seat, Rodriguez gave $26,000 of his own money to Melendrez, a key campaign volunteer, and told her to funnel the money into his campaign account by asking family members to make contributions.

“Melendrez enticed 25 family members and friends to make campaign contributions by telling them that their contributions would be reimbursed,” according to the ethics commission accusation. Those contributions ranged from $775 to $1,100 each and totaled $24,250. Melendrez paid back all 25 contributions using Rodriguez’s money, according to the commission.

In a Jan. 12, 2015, campaign disclosure statement, Rodriguez certified that he had raised $51,001 in contributions from other people when in fact half of the reported funds were actually his own money, the commission alleged.

“We can’t comment on ongoing investigations,” said David Tristan, deputy executive director of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, when reached by phone.

The school district quickly issued a statement about the charges against Rodriguez, who was named board president in July.

“L.A. Unified has been made aware of the charges against Dr. Ref Rodriguez. These allegations are not connected to any District business. However, we will cooperate, as needed, with the District Attorney’s Office,” said the district’s General Counsel David Holmquist in a statement.

Generally speaking, the commission’s administrative enforcement process requires it to schedule the item before the 5-member civilian board, which will make a determination on whether to refer it to an administrative law judge or hear the case itself, Tristan of the ethics commission said. If the matter is referred to the judge, he or she will make a recommendation to the board, which has the final authority to determine if violations exist and whether to issue penalties.

Administrative penalties — which are separate from those levied by the courts — can be $5,000 per count, or three times the amount at issue, whichever is greater, he said.

Bob Stern, first general counsel of the Fair Political Practice Commission from 1975 to 1983, said candidates are allowed to donate unlimited amounts to their own campaigns, so the allegations that he chose to funnel his money to the campaign illegally is unusual.

“You see one or two (laundering) cases like that a year where interest groups are trying to influence a candidate,” Stern said, adding that if what prosecutors say is true, “this is one of very few cases I’ve seen where a candidate was money laundering” his own money.

Staff writers Brenda Gazzar, Wes Woods II and Elizabeth Chou and City News Service contributed to this report.