Former O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do headed to prison for COVID relief bribery scheme

Andrew Do, the former Orange County supervisor who took more than $550,000 in bribes over COVID-relief money meant to buy meals for needy, elderly constituents, was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison.

“I just do not believe a sentence anything less than the maximum reflects the seriousness of the crime,” said U.S. District Judge James Selna. “Public corruption brings damage far beyond the monetary loss to the county.”

The judge expressed displeasure that the law allowed him to sentence Do to only five years. Leaving the courthouse with his lawyers, Do declined to comment.

Do fled war-torn Vietnam with his family as a child to become an attorney and one of Southern California’s most powerful Vietnamese American politicians. As part of a plea deal, Do admitted last year that he funneled more than $10 million in federal pandemic funds to a nonprofit that in turn steered money to his two daughters.

The scandal was uncovered in 2023 by the news site LAist, which reported that Do approved contracts worth millions to the nonprofit, which promised to provide meals to the poor, elderly and disabled residents of Little Saigon but could show scant evidence of its effort.

Do approved the contracts without disclosing that his 23-year-old daughter Rhiannon, a law student at UC Irvine, had signed documents identifying herself as the nonprofit’s president or vice president.

As accusations mounted, Do claimed he was the victim of slander, responding with defiant vitriol against the reporter who broke the story, Nick Gerda, and demanding his firing. When the Orange County Register called for Do’s resignation, he accused the newspaper of spreading “gross misinformation.”

Late last year, however, Do agreed to resign from the Board of Supervisors and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. Federal prosecutors said the Viet America Society gave Rhiannon a job, and paid her as an employee, after her father voted in favor of the lucrative contracts. Prosecutors also said the organization steered money to Do’s other daughter through an air conditioning company.

“I’m very grateful that the judge saw the case for what it is,” said Janet Nguyen, the current 1st District Supervisor. “He benefited while people suffered. He took advantage during the pandemic, when no one was watching.”

She said the county is conducting an audit to better understand how Do’s scheme was allowed to occur.

Prosecutors accused Rhiannon Do of making a false statement on a loan application, but agreed to defer the charge, allowing her to enter a diversion agreement in exchange for her cooperation.

The elder Do, a Republican, worked as a deputy public defender and a prosecutor before he won a special election in 2015 to represent Orange County’s 1st Supervisorial District, which covers Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Westminster and Seal Beach.

He became the second Vietnamese American ever to serve on the board, and was later elected to two four-year terms. He was known for his efforts to combat homelessness and for his sponsorship of a Tet Festival in Fountain Valley that drew thousands of people annually.

At a time when Vietnamese immigrants face increased threats of eviction and deportation, the disgraced supervisor’s behavior “erodes the already precarious level of trust our community has in the government,” said Mai Nguyen Do, the research and policy manager for the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, a community group.

“After he’s released, it wouldn’t surprise me if he goes about his life, and meanwhile so many working-class people in the community don’t have the resources to pick themselves up again after they’re incarcerated,” said Do, who has no relation to the former supervisor.

Jodi Balma, a professor of political science at Fullerton College who has followed the Do scandal, wondered how the bribery scheme somehow passed through the checkpoints of the county bureaucracy.

“There are really good and smart though somewhat annoying procedures in place to verify all contracts with the county,” Balma said. “Somebody had to say, ‘Approve that payment’ without any receipts or verification or services. And those people have not been held responsible.”

Balma also wondered whether it was fair that Rhiannon Do was allowed to enter a diversion program.

“If there is no punishment for his daughter, that feels unfair to all the other law students who might not be accepted to the California Bar Assn. because of misconduct,” Balma said. “This is huge misconduct for someone who wants to be a lawyer.”

Andrew Do’s defense attorneys asked that he be sentenced to 33 months in prison. In a court filing, they said he had been volunteering at a maritime institute that teaches sailing to underprivileged teens, adding that the head of the program had praised Do’s “unwavering ethical compass.”

The defense attorneys said that Do had expressed “shame” and “deep sorrow” for his crimes, that his license to practice law had been suspended and that his life has been “destroyed by his own acts.”

Do had “received no actual payment to himself—all significant funds were provided to his daughter Rhiannon Do,” the defense wrote in a court motion, claiming he had been “willfully blinded to the violations by the desire to see benefit to his adult daughter.… He now recognizes how completely wrong he was in this catastrophic self-delusion.”

The plea deal called for restitution between $550,000 and $730,500, with the sale of the family’s forfeited house in Tustin credited against that figure.

“This episode of poor judgment stands out as unique in his otherwise commendable life,” the defense wrote. “He had a catastrophic lapse of judgment when he failed to stop payments to his daughters, and because VAS was helping his family, he failed to see the red flags of these illegal acts.”

Pleading for leniency, defense attorneys invoked Do’s back story as a man who rose to public service after a childhood in war-ravaged Vietnam. But prosecutors said his background only amplified his guilt, considering many of the constituents he victimized had similarly difficult pasts, and he was aware of their vulnerability.

Do “made the decision to abandon the elderly, sick, and impoverished during a national emergency so that he could personally benefit,” prosecutors wrote.

“When the County and nation were at their most vulnerable, defendant saw an opportunity to exploit the chaos for his own benefit and, in so doing, betrayed the trust of hundreds of thousands of his constituents,” prosecutors wrote. “The scheme was far-reaching and premeditated, and defendant had no qualms about pulling others into his criminal enterprise, including his own children.”

Do’s crimes, the prosecutors wrote, were “an assault on the very legitimacy of government.”

Calling his conduct “despicable” and his attempt to minimize his crimes “absurd,” prosecutors said that of the more than $10 million he steered to the Viet America Society, much of it supposedly for meal programs for the elderly and disabled, only $1.4 million went to that purpose.

Do’s willingness to involve his family in his scheme pointed to his “moral indifference,” prosecutors said, while his campaign of invective against the press aggravated his culpability.

In connection with the Do case, the U.S. attorney’s office announced charges last week of bribery against the founder of the Viet America Society, and for wire fraud against a man affiliated with another Orange County relief group.

The judge ordered that Do surrender himself to federal custody by Aug. 15 and recommended he be incarcerated in the federal prison in Lompoc.