By james art 
Andrew Do escaped the fiery fall of Saigon with only the clothes on his back and a suitcase full of dictionaries in multiple languages, the story goes; his family had no idea where they would end up and wanted it ready.
Do’s story was part of the legendary American Dream. A refugee immigrant from a war-torn nation seizes an opportunity and rises to political power, until — tragically? greedy? stupid? — wastes everything. It’s a story that could be repeated here in Law and Order Orange County – but more on that in a minute.
The former Orange County supervisor, who has been dogged by smaller scandals for years, agreed to resign his seat on the powerful board and plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery on Tuesday. The scheme, federal prosecutors allege, involved funneling millions of dollars in COVID relief funds to a nonprofit his daughter worked for — the Viet America Society — and then pocketing much of it for the family’s personal use. The most disgusting part was that the money was intended to feed homebound elderly and disabled people during a global pandemic, disgusted prosecutors said. He faces up to five years in federal prison, a potential punishment that seems to some like a shameless slap on the wrist that is not at all proportionate to the scale of the crime.
Yes, Do will lose any pension he earned from June 2020 onwards – the scheme’s start date – but he was a county supervisor and prosecutor for many years before that, so his pension will still be in the six-figure range until the end of his life.
It’s crazy that the scam went on for so long, even as county officials noted the oddity of the VAS contracts and asked questions — which went unheeded.
And what about Do’s wife, Judge Cheri Pham? Was there any benefit to all of this? United States Attorney Martin Estrada raised the issue several times Tuesday, assuring the crowd of reporters that the investigation was far from over.
Scandal
Corruption is part of the human condition, according to USC School of Public Policy experts Sol Price. Power can distort one’s view, and some elected officials can actually convince themselves that it’s all just a day’s work. Law & Order Orange County is regularly rocked by political scandals, but Do’s spectacular downfall hauntingly mirrors the recent travails of Anaheim’s Hari Sidhu. Another American dream has collapsed.
Sidhu is only a few years older than Do. He came to the US around the same time, in the 1970s, a young immigrant from India who started out as an aerospace engineer and succeeded in the restaurant business.
That wasn’t enough: The former Anaheim mayor hoped to win up to $1 million in campaign contributions from the Angels baseball team by passing on confidential information along the way as the parties negotiated Anaheim Stadium. Sidhu pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice, one count of wire fraud and two counts of perjury last year.
Several others were also implicated in this scandal. Todd Ament, former CEO of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce and alleged leader of the “cabal” pulling the strings at Anaheim City Hall, pleaded guilty to fraud in 2022. Melahat Rafiei, who ran a political consulting firm, pleaded guilty in attempted wire fraud (and others admitted she agreed to try to bribe two Irvine City Council members on cannabis-related matters).
And who can forget former sheriff Mike Carona and his right-hand man George Jaramillo? Carona, dubbed “America’s Sheriff” by Larry King, was the county’s top cop for nine years before being convicted of witness tampering for trying to convince a former deputy to lie during a federal corruption investigation. He served 52 months of a 66-month sentence.
Jaramillo, meanwhile, was convicted of tax evasion but sued the county for wrongful termination — and won about $700,000.
This part is hard to believe, but it was exactly 30 years ago that then-Treasurer and Tax Collector Robert Citron held press conferences insisting that the billions of public dollars sunk into the county’s investment fund were safe and sound, thank you very much.
Sure enough, his highly leveraged pool and misguided bets on interest rates collapsed on December 6, 1994, setting off America’s largest municipal bankruptcy and losing $1.64 billion.
Citron pleaded guilty to false accounting, was fined $100,000 and sentenced to one year in prison. His right-hand man, Matt Raabe, was convicted of fraud and misappropriation of public funds, but Raabe’s conviction was overturned because the district attorney had a conflict of interest and should never have prosecuted him (all county departments, including the DA’s office, suffered from the budget cuts after bankruptcy).
So while prosecutors are calling the Doe scandal a “Robin Hood in the background,” the county’s bankruptcy could be considered a straight-up Robin Hood. Before they lost so much money, Citron’s interest rates were good rats money – so much so that he and Raabe fudged the books to keep people from panicking by reporting lower than actual returns on cities, schools and special districts. Yes, they made $89 million off the top — but no, it didn’t go into their own pockets. Instead, it went into county coffers to fund community services.
It seems almost quaint these days, doesn’t it?
“Betrayal”
Selfish, sloppy, disappointing, unachievable, a betrayal of the public trust that angered and disgusted them – law enforcement officials who announced the settlement with Do on Tuesday expressed their outrage.
But this is not the first time Do’s behavior has raised questions. There was controversy over whether he actually lived in Garden Grove when he ran for City Council in 2008. And again when he ran for the First Ward seat on the Board of Supervisors in 2015.
There was a lot of maneuvering in 2017 when Do asked to be appointed to CalOptima, the multibillion-dollar, publicly funded health insurance program for the poor. He was thwarted then, but later succeeded and resigned shortly before the state auditor launched an investigation chastising the agency for hoarding funds, giving big pay raises to big wigs and failing to follow “best practices.”
In 2022, the state’s campaign finance watchdog said Do must pay a $12,000 fine for violating “pay-to-play” rules, among other things. While at CalOptima, Do managed the state contracts of two lobbyists who were donors to his political campaigns, the California Fair Political Practices Commission said.
Enter now into a $10 million+ discretionary fund administered directly from the Do’s office with little oversight.
“We have emails where county staff are asking legitimate questions about liability,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “Where does this money go? Why wasn’t it stopped?’
The county has an “absolute obligation” to find out why those red flags were ignored, he said. Stay tuned.
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