Former Anaheim mayor sentenced in Angel Stadium corruption probe

Harry Sidhu, the former Anaheim mayor who took office vowing to keep the Angels baseball franchise in town, was sentenced Friday to two months in federal prison for conduct related to a collapsed deal to sell the team’s stadium and other crimes.

“[The] defendant did betray the city of Anaheim while he was serving as mayor, and he deleted evidence of that betrayal,” U.S. District Judge John Holcomb said in imposing the sentence.

Sidhu, 67, pleaded guilty in 2023 to deleting emails with the intent to impede a federal probe into the stadium deal, making false statements to the FBI and tax fraud related to his purchase of a helicopter.

At Friday’s sentencing hearing, the judge issued a $55,000 fine along with the prison term. Sidhu is to surrender himself by Sept. 2.

Sidhu won office in 2018 on a plank to keep the Angels in Anaheim, where the team leases a city-owned stadium surrounded by antiquated 1960s-era parking lots. To ensure the team’s continued presence, he championed a deal to sell the stadium to Angels owner Arte Moreno’s development company for $325 million, with Moreno’s promise to build an urban village of homes, shops and restaurants in the surrounding acreage.

Sidhu sent emails containing confidential information about the city’s negotiating terms to Todd Ament, who ran the city’s Chamber of Commerce, and to an unnamed Angels consultant. Sidhu then voted for the stadium deal without revealing he had shared the sensitive information.

“Defendant was using the Angels consultant and [the former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president] to provide that confidential inside information to the Angels, so that the Angels could use that information in the negotiations with the City to purchase Angel Stadium on terms beneficial to the Angels,” Sidhu’s plea agreement stated.

Ament, who has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and other charges, began cooperating with the FBI and agreed to wear a wire. In January 2022, he secretly recorded Sidhu saying he expected a campaign contribution from the Angels. “I am hoping to get at least a million,” Sidhu said.

When the FBI approached Sidhu a few months later, he said he expected nothing from the Angels and that he did not remember giving the team confidential information.

Sidhu never actually asked the Angels for such a donation, his lawyers argued. And though he deleted emails related to the stadium deal, his attorneys argued that this “did not actually impede or obstruct the federal investigation” given agents got the emails from Ament anyway.

In May 2022, as the FBI’s probe into the stadium deal reached public notice, the Anaheim City Council voted to torpedo the deal, and Sidhu resigned as mayor, eight months before his four-year term was supposed to end.

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In a letter to the judge, Sidhu said he was “ashamed and deeply regretful” for the harm he had done to the public’s trust, and described a lifetime of hard work and public service.

In the letter, he recounted emigrating from India to the United States in 1974 with just $6 in his pocket and small grasp of English. He said he paid for community college in Philadelphia by cleaning toilets on the night shift at a Holiday Inn for $2.89 an hour.

Sidhu went on to earn a degree in mechanical engineering, worked at General Dynamics and Hughes Aircraft, and bought a series of Burger King and Papa John’s restaurants across Southern California. He served two terms on the Anaheim City Council, and when he won the mayor’s job, he focused on keeping the Angels in town.

“Losing the Angels would have been devastating to the city,” he wrote to the judge. “I was trying to get a stadium deal done, because I believed that it was critical to keep the Angels in Anaheim.”

Sidhu admitted sending emails summarizing the city’s confidential deal points, and deleting them to avoid political embarrassment. He conceded that he “pridefully bragged” about expecting a donation from the Angels, but said he never actually asked the Angels for a donation. When an FBI agent approached him and asked about the emails, “I panicked and lied, because I knew it would make me look bad in my reelection campaign,” he said.

Sidhu also admitted that he submitted false documents professing he lived in Arizona to avoid paying $16,000 in California sales tax when he bought a helicopter.

“I have learned hard lessons from this experience, including disgracing my family and destroying my career and reputation,” he wrote.

Sidhu’s attorneys, Paul Meyer and Craig Wilke, had argued that Sidhu should receive probation and a $40,000 fine. In a sentencing memo, the attorneys said that although he shared confidential information “so that the Angels could buy the Stadium on terms beneficial to the Angels,” he did not compromise the city’s position by doing so.

“Mr. Sidhu exercised extraordinarily poor judgment believing that his political opponents would use the information against him in his reelection campaign,” his attorneys said, but contended his behavior did not amount to corruption.

The Angels were not implicated in Sidhu’s plea agreement. “There is no pending case against the Angels for this conduct,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Melissa Rabbani said Friday. The team continues to play at Angel Stadium, and in January, extended the lease, committing to staying through 2032.