Orange County supervisor admits to taking $550,000 bribe

SANTA ANA, California (CN) — Orange County Board of Supervisors member Andrew Do agreed to plead guilty to one federal charge of bribery on Tuesday. He admitted to accepting more than $550,000 in exchange for helping to steer more than $10 million in federal and state Covid-19 relief funds to the Viet America Society, a nonprofit.

“While millions of Americans were dying from COVID-19, Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do was the fox in the hen house personified," Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a written statement, “raiding millions in federal pandemic relief funds and orchestrating the money intended to feed elderly and ailing residents to instead fill the pockets of insiders, himself and his loved ones all while portraying a public persona of a hometown hero guiding his constituents through the uncertainty and fear of a global pandemic.”

Do, 61, was born in Saigon and fled with his family to California after the South Vietnamese government fell in 1975. He became an attorney and worked for a time as a prosecutor in Orange County. A member of the Republican Party, Do was elected to the Garden Grove city council in 2008, and the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 2015.

He has been dogged by accusations of corruption throughout his political career. In 2022, he was fined $12,000 by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for using his position to “influence governmental contracting decisions involving a participant who contributed to his campaign.”

Since 2020, the Viet America Society has received seven different contracts, worth nearly $10.4 million. Most of that money, $9.3 million, was to provide meals to elderly and disabled residents. But according to the plea agreement signed by Do, only $1.4 million was actually spent on meals to fulfill the nonprofit’s contracts.

“A significant portion was spent,” plea deal says, “for the benefit of insiders, including to purchase properties” and “bribe payments to defendant’s daughters,” among other things. Viet America Society even put his 23-year-old daughter Rhiannon Do on its payroll, paying her $8,000 per month, totaling $224,000 by February 2024.

“Defendant knew that some of the funds [the Viet America Society] received from the County were being used to pay bribes instead of to provide meals to the elderly or infirm,” the plea agreement says. “Defendant nonetheless intentionally voted on the contracts in reckless disregard as to whether the funds were being properly used. He did this because of the influence of the bribes he was paid through is daughters.”

Andrew Do also appeared in promotional videos of the Viet America Society. In one, he claimed the organization was providing 2,700 meals per week.

Under the terms of the plea deal, he agreed to resign from the Board of Supervisors, to pay back all the bribery money he received by the Viet America Society and to forfeit any assets connected to the bribery scheme, including a house in Tustin that Rhiannon Do purchased in 2023.

Once the guilty plea is formally entered, Andrew Do faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. Rhiannon Do, who also pleaded guilty to filing a falsified mortgage application, will receive up to three years probation.

At a press conference, United States Attorney Martin Estrada likened Andrew Do to a “Robin Hood in reverse.”

“By putting his own interests over those of his constituents, the defendant sold his high office and betrayed the public’s trust,” Estrada said in a written statement. “Even worse, the money he misappropriated and accepted as bribe payments was taken from those most in need – older adults and disabled residents. Our community deserved much better."

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