SANTA ANA (CNS) – Former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do, who resigned as part of a plea deal stemming from a bribery scheme involving disbursement of COVID-19 relief funds, was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison.
Attorneys for Do, 62, were asking that he serve just shy of three years in federal prison, but at Monday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge James Selna tentatively settled on five years behind bars. Do’s attorneys asked him to revisit the recommended sentence of four years recommended by probation officials. Five years was the maximum sentence available under the plea agreement. Prosecutors pushed for the maximum sentence.
Some residents filed victim impact letters and wanted to speak at the hearing, but Selna cut that off, explaining the only victim with legal standing in the hearing was the county.
“Their letters went into matters not pertinent here,” Selna said. “I understand the public interest, but a sentencing is not a public forum.”
Do’s attorney, Paul Meyer, emphasized that probation officials recommended four years three times, even after new prosecutors were assigned to the case and asked them to revisit their recommendation. Meyer pointed out that is “unusual.”
Meyer and Do’s other attorney, Eliot Krieger, said four years still served as a strong deterrence to others.
The defense attorneys said all Do received personally from the scheme was a watch and help preparing a tax return one year.
They argued that Do was a proud father who grew “morally blind” to the corruption as his daughters reaped the benefits of the scheme.
“Allowing his daughters to get paid was a serious mistake, but a single mistake,” Krieger said.
Do also quickly agreed to the government seizing property as restitution, Krieger said. A separate hearing on what restitution Do will owe is scheduled for Aug. 15.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nandor Kiss said the involvement of his daughters in the scheme is “aggravating, not mitigating, because he’s involving his family into the corruption.”
Do’s daughter, Rhiannon, “was being paid nearly $100,000 a year despite being a college student,” Kiss said. Another daughter received a “six- figure payment,” the prosecutor added.
Selna noted that under the sentencing guidelines, Do would have faced 87 to 188 months.
“So any sentence less than the maximum does not reflect the seriousness of the crime,” Selna said. “I believe 60 months is appropriate.”
The judge said bribery erodes public trust in government, noting that while the harm may not be easily measured, it’s significant. He emphasized that when people lose faith in their leaders, it creates a serious issue — and in this case, “the breach of trust is the real crime in this case.”
Do will be placed on three years of supervised release when he gets out of prison. He is scheduled to surrender to authorities Aug. 15.
Selna recommended he do the time in Lompoc as his attorneys requested.
Do and his attorneys declined comment after the hearing.
From 2020 through 2024, Do “used his position as the supervisor for Orange County’s First District to steer millions of dollars to his personal associates in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes,” prosecutors said in their sentencing brief.
“When the county and the nation were at their most vulnerable (during the COVID-19 pandemic), 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 said.
“The scheme was far-reaching and premeditated, and defendant had no qualms about pulling others into his criminal enterprise, including his own children.”
Prosecutors argued that “public corruption is a unique form of democratic sabotage,” and added, “It can be more corrosive than overt violence in destabilizing democratic norms, because it operates subtly, behind closed doors, infecting institutions that are meant to embody impartiality.”
The prosecutors argued Do earned harsher punishment for his corruption.
Prosecutors wrote that Selna “should treat defendant’s crimes not merely a theft or fraud by a public official, but as an assault on the very legitimacy of government.”
Do admitted in his plea agreement that in exchange for more than $550,000 in bribes, he cast votes on the Board of Supervisors beginning in 2020 that directed more than $10 million in COVID relief funds to the Viet America Society, where his daughter Rhiannon worked, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
When Do pleaded guilty in October, Selna told him he could face a stiffer sentence, but then it could be appealed. But Do waived all of his appeals and cannot withdraw the plea if the sentence does not exceed the five years.
From 2021 to 2023, Do funneled more than $10 million in county contracts to VAS, prosecutors said. The money was part of a food-delivery program during the pandemic as well as a $1 million grant for a Vietnam War Memorial in Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, prosecutors said.
Rhiannon worked for VAS and will be able to take advantage of a diversion program as part of her father’s plea deal. Rhiannon Do was paid $8,000 monthly between September 2021 and February 2024, for a total of $224,000, prosecutors said.
In July 2023, $381,500 from VAS was put in escrow so Rhiannon Do could buy a $1.035 million house in Tustin, prosecutors said. Do’s other daughter received $100,000 in October 2022, prosecutors said.
Do used $14,849 of the money to pay property tax for two properties in Orange County that he owned with his wife, Orange County Superior Court Judge Cheri Pham, prosecutors said. Do used another $15,000 to pay off credit card debt, prosecutors said.
Do’s “bribery scheme with VAS was not only corrupt, it also turned out to be a fraud on the county as VAS was not providing the meals to elderly and disabled residents as it had promised,” prosecutors said. VAS “only spent about 15% ($1.4 million) on providing meals,” they added.
Prosecutors slammed Do for making online videos praising VAS and its owner as a “selfless community hero.”
Meanwhile, later Monday, a new co-defendant in the case — 61-year-old Thanh Huong Nguyen of Santa Ana — was expected to make his initial appearance in federal court on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and concealment of money laundering. Nguyen was named in an indictment Wednesday that was unsealed Friday. Nguyen operated the Hand to Hand Relief Organization.
Do’s friend and associate Peter Anh Pham, 65, of Garden Grove, who ran VAS, was also indicted on single counts each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud bribery and six counts each of wire fraud and concealment of money laundering. But Pham’s whereabouts are unknown and federal prosecutors say he is considered a fugitive.
Do’s other daughter lost her job and Rhiannon Do “faces consequences to her potential career as an attorney,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also knocked Do for settling a Fair Political Practices Commission Complaint in 2017 for helping a political donor in pursuit of a government contract.
Do’s attorneys argued that he “received no actual payment to himself – – all significant funds were provided to his daughter Rhiannon Do,” and that he was “willfully blinded to the violations by the desire to see benefit to his adult daughter, and his belief that his daughter was providing worthwhile services to those who provided the benefits to her.”
Do, however, “now recognizes how completely wrong he was in this catastrophic self-delusion,” his attorneys said.
“He has watched the complete destruction of his career, reputation, his life and that of his family,” his attorneys said. “He apologized to his family, his community and former colleagues and to this court. In short, Andrew Do’s life has been destroyed by his own acts.”
He agreed to resign his post as supervisor, had his state bar license suspended, stopped working and volunteers his time to benefit the community, his attorneys said.
Do also agrees that restitution should be between $550,000 and $730,500 and that the sale of the home in Tustin will go toward that, his attorneys said.
Do’s attorneys highlighted his service as a public defender and prosecutor as well as an elected official. His “implicit agreement” to “reward” Do for the contracts for VAS was not a “quid-pro-quo” conspiracy, his attorneys argued. The corruption was limited to the dealings with VAS, his lawyers emphasized.
“All of this is important because it underscores that what we are dealing with here is a blind spot involving his daughters, and no way a pattern of corruption,” his attorneys said.
Do’s attorneys also recounted his history growing up and ultimately escaping war-torn Vietnam.
Do said in a letter to Selna that he was born in Saigon during the Vietnam War and arrived in the United States when he was 12 years old and settled into a refugee camp in Alabama where his parents worked in a cotton mill. He said he and his siblings worked odd jobs in the neighborhood and “learned to cope with the anti-immigrant and racist atmosphere that some, but not all, in the community expressed.”
His family moved to Garden Grove in 1976, where “11 of us shared a two-bedroom apartment,” he wrote.
Do wrote in his letter, “I am guilty. I am ashamed, and I fully admit the wrongs that I have done. I only ask that you look at the larger picture in evaluating my acts.”
He added, “In retrospect, I can’t believe that I did not see the evil of allowing this nonprofit (whose money came from the county) to assist my daughter in purchasing a home. I was blinded by a father’s seeing his daughter as being worth every penny of what they paid her.
“My daughter did, indeed, work hard for the nonprofit, and I am proud of the work she did. However, it is clear that I simply did not want to see the payments for what they were (a bribe) and now my bad judgment has derailed all that I had sought to achieve before I left public office.”
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