When the Department of Justice announced their indictment of former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao last week, they said her live-in boyfriend was bribed to the tune of $95,000. But the full indictment says Thao actually asked for $3 million, though didn’t get it.

In the wake of Friday’s announcement that former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and her romantic partner Andre Jones were being indicted on eight counts of bribery and fraud, the Chronicle has an interesting note about one of the businessmen alleged to have bribed the two of them. That businessman is David Duong, owner of Cal Waste Solutions, which handles curbside recycling pick-up in Oakland, who is also among those being indicted.

And per the Chronicle, Duong was granted his request to a judge to leave town so he could attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, DC today. So maybe Duong and Trump can bond over their criminal indictments, and how to beat them.

Regardless, when the indictments were announced Friday, the US Department of Justice said that Duong and his son Andy Duong “made $95,000 in payments to [Andre] Jones for a no-show job” as part of the bribery scheme. But now that the feds have released the full 22-page indictment, it says that Thao asked for more, in fact, a lot more. The indictment says Thao asked for “up to $3 million," though she and Jones did not receive that full sum.  

The indictment says that shortly before Thao was elected mayor in 2022, the Duongs offered that Jones could "make $300,000 in direct payments for a no-show job" if she steered city contracts to the Duongs’ modular home firm Evolutionary Homes. Since Thao and Jones lived together, the spoils could be split between them evenly.

But in March 2023, two months after Thao was sworn into office, the indictment alleges that “Thao asked for additional money upfront in furtherance of the bribery scheme.” It goes on to say that “the parties discussed an updated arrangement whereby Jones would receive up to $3 million, instead of the $300,000 as originally agreed,” in exchange for the City of Oakland upping their purchase to 300 modular homes, and giving Cal Waste Solutions a ten-year renewal contract.

Mind you, Thao and Jones did not get their $3 million bribe, though they did ask for it. Jones did not even get the full $300,000 he was promised, and only got $95,000, as this modular home deal on the decommissioned Oakland Army Base fell through for still-unknown reasons.

But it’s pretty damning that Thao offered to buy the homes using "emergency powers," which would end-around any required transparency rules and competitive bidding processes. And the fellow who negotiated the bribe, checkered-past businessman Mario Juarez, had perhaps already been flipped by the feds as an informant in this investigation. As we see below from his text messages to Andy Duong, he types the kind of very precise “We are bribing them with this and here’s what we get in return” kind of text threads that makes federal prosecutors’ jobs much easier on public corruption cases.  

Oh, and Sheng Thao’s rent was apparently getting paid with the bribe money. Thao and her partner Jones lived together, and prosecutors say Thao paid the rent herself from December 2021 to April 2022 (before she was mayor). They reportedly then split the rent for the rest of 2022.

But once Thao was mayor and the payments started kincking in, Jones “paid the entirety of the rent,” according to prosecutors. The indictment adds that Jones “increased his contribution to, or paid the entity of, shared bills with Thao, including household utility bills and mobile phone bills.”

We’ve also been waiting for another shot to drop, as Friday’s indictment says that Thao appointed a “high-level city official” in Oakland at the Duongs’ request. That official was not named, though the indictment says that Juarez recommended this person, saying in a text that “I wanted him because while at City he make [sic] sure my projects got done and grants were given to me.”

The indictment also says that Oakland’s City Administrator, who would normally appoint someone to this position, "did not believe the experience of City Employee 1 qualified that person for a director-level position." Yet the person got appointed anyway.

The Bay Area News group identifies this “City Employee 1” as Larry Gallegos, who was appointed interim deputy director of the city’s Housing and Community Development. There is no indication that Gallegos was directly involved in any wrongdoing, though the Chronicle reports Gallegos resigned on Friday after being identified in the press.

One more interesting nugget. Thao, Jones, and the Duongs were indicted for “making false statements to authorities.” And the indictment points out that Andy Duong lied to the FBI about his payments to Jones, and told the feds he did not "deal with Andre Jones for anything."

So maybe part of David Duong’s agenda in attending the Trump inauguration was to get his son off the hook for lying to FBI agents. But he may have to buy an awful lot of those Trump cryptocurrency meme coins in order to do so.

Related: Sheng Thao (and Her Boyfriend) Indicted on Eight Federal Counts of Bribery and Corruption [SFist]

Image: Mayor Sheng Thao via Youtube