Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has been indicted on federal corruption charges

Sheng Thao, who was ousted as mayor of Oakland, Calif., just two months ago amid an ongoing crime spree, has been indicted on federal corruption charges, the prosecutors on Friday.

Ms. Thao is one of the four accused. The federal indictment names Ms. Thao’s boyfriend, Andre Jones; the head of the local waste company, David Trung Duong; and Mr. Duong’s son, Andy Hung Duong.

Patrick D. Robbins, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said on Friday that Ms. Thao in October 2022 agreed to extend the city’s contract with the waste company, California Waste Solutions, will buy the property from the Duongs and use it. their influence to help them in exchange for campaign email efforts and additional payments that would benefit him and Mr. Jones.

California Waste Solutions spent $75,000 on an email attack that helped Ms. Thao’s 2022 mayoral campaign, prosecutors said. After Ms. Thao took office, the company paid Mr. Jones $95,000 for “no-show” work and promised additional payments to the couple in exchange for Ms. Thao’s influence at Lapan. of the City, according to the charges.

Prosecutors said Ms. Thao took steps to help companies owned by the Duongs and by appointing top city officials of their choice.

Ms. Thao faces six charges, including bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud. He and three other defendants are scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Oakland on Friday. Ms. Thao could not immediately be reached for comment.

“People need to know they can trust City Hall officials to work in the best interests of the people of Oakland,” said Mr. Robbins. “That public trust is broken when elected officials agree to a payoff system for profit.”

Andy Duong’s attorneys said in a joint statement Friday that he is innocent of the charges and that they hoped prosecutors would conclude that “there is no basis and no substance to the gossip and assumptions linked to the creation and deception of prosecutors who lack all basic confidence.”

“Sadly, Andy is just the latest in a long line of Asian Americans who have been unfairly singled out and forced to pay a price for daring to be politically active,” said his attorney, Winston Chan, Doug Sprague and Erik. Babcock.

The indictment comes two months after Ms. Thao, a Democrat who is slated to run for Oakland’s mayor in 2022, became the first mayor of a major American city to be elected in a decade. powerful.

Efforts to remove Ms. Thao from office began long before she was publicly linked to the federal investigation in June. Early in his career, the people of Oakland, often seen as a rough and tumble surrogate for San Francisco, became disillusioned with the city’s crime rate, the lack of budget shortfalls and the loss of league sports teams. Ms. Thao’s decision to fire a popular police chief also drew criticism from her critics.

Ms. Thao’s credibility was further eroded last summer after FBI agents raided her home in the Oakland Hills for hours.

As part of the June raid, FBI agents searched three other homes in Oakland that were linked to Duong’s family. David Duong and his family are being investigated by Oakland’s Commission on Public Ethics for allegedly violating campaign limits and giving money to political candidates through “straw donors” , including Ms. Thao’s during her City Council campaign.

Mr. Duong did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Last year, Ms. Thao suggested that the FBI investigation was designed to hurt her politically, noting that it came in an effort to recall her as eligible for the ballot with voter signatures. . He asked for more time to turn the city around, pointing to a drop in crime rates in many categories.

“I want to be very clear: I did nothing wrong,” Ms. Thao said in brief remarks at City Hall shortly after the attack last summer. “I’m sure they won’t charge me with a crime because I’m innocent.”

Ms. Thao has overcome many challenges of her own. Raised by Hmong refugees fleeing the war in Laos, she survived domestic violence growing up and lived in her car with her son as a child.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, he worked in politics in Oakland. He served on the City Council for four years before narrowly winning the mayoral race with the support of progressive groups and labor unions.

When Ms. Thao was sworn in, she became the most prominent Hmong American official in the United States.

But efforts by Ms. Thao and her labor allies to fight the recall have been unsuccessful. In November, less than two years into her term, more than 60 percent of voters voted to remove Ms. Thao from office. Pamela Price, the Alameda County district attorney and another progressive Democrat, was also recalled on the ballot.

Shortly after learning that the recall was a success, Ms. Thao thanked the city in a statement, calling it the “honor of a lifetime” to be mayor.

There will be a mayoral election next April. Among the top candidates so far are former US representative Barbara Lee, who is not running for re-election to the Senate because she is running for an open Senate seat; Loren Taylor, a Democrat who narrowly lost to Ms. Thao in the 2022 ballot; and Ms. Thao’s former assistant Renia Webb. The winner of the special election will serve out Ms. Thao’s term, which ends in January 2027.

Ms. Webb, who resigned as Ms. Thao’s assistant after learning of the corruption allegations in December 2022, said she believed the indictment was a “turning point for Oakland.”

“We did the right thing by reminding the previous mayor. He’s just going to hurt us,” he said in an interview.

Claire Moses contributed to the report.