How disgraced CA politicians get rich at the public trough
Image from the 1973 movie Serpico, about a police investigation of civic corruption in New York City.
Fed prosecutors claim an Orange County supervisor redirected more than half-a-million cool ones to himself and his family, before he was outed. NYT reports.
The federal money was supposed to feed seniors and people with disabilities in Southern California who were stuck at home and especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
Instead, Supervisor Andrew Do figured out how to funnel more than $550,000 to himself and his family through a charity in Orange County, Calif., federal prosecutors said on Tuesday. Rather than pay for meals, some of the funds helped to finance a million-dollar home for his daughter and retire $15,000 of his own credit card debt.
Mr. Do, 62, resigned on Tuesday from the Orange County Board of Supervisors and agreed to plead guilty to taking bribes in exchange for directing more than $10 million in pandemic relief funds to a charity that had no track record of serving the community.
Mr. Do now faces up to five years in prison under a plea agreement that he struck with federal prosecutors. He had sat on the elected board since 2015.
Starting in 2020, Orange County supervisors were given discretion over how to allocate federal nutrition aid in their districts. Each was allowed to direct $1 million in contracts in the first year, with amounts increasing in subsequent years, according to federal documents.
Mr. Do was responsible for directing more than $10 million toward Viet America Society, a nonprofit that was incorporated in 2020, with $9.3 million intended to provide meals for the county’s most vulnerable residents.
Viet America Society then began to pay a separate company, which prosecutors did not name, at least $3.8 million between April 2021 and February 2024. The unnamed company used some of the money to pay one of Mr. Do’s daughters, Rhiannon Do, at least $224,000 over that period.
In July, the same company paid $381,000 to an escrow company, which Rhiannon Do used to buy a $1 million home in Tustin, Calif. Mr. Do admitted that the escrow money was a disguised bribe, prosecutors said.
As part of the scheme, another of Mr. Do's daughters received more than $100,000, including three $25,000 checks from an air-conditioning company that took funds from Viet America Society.
Some of the money that went to the daughters directly benefited Mr. Do, prosecutors said. In 2022, nearly $15,000 went toward property taxes on two properties that Mr. Do owned with his wife, Cheri Pham, a judge in Orange County Superior Court. A similar amount went toward Mr. Do’s credit card debt.
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