OC Supervisor Andrew Do Gets Prison For Taking Bribes

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison for his role in a bribery scheme involving disbursement of COVID-19 relief funds.

The sentencing marks the first criminal conviction of a county supervisor in nearly half a century, according to The Orange County Register.

Attorneys for Do, 62, were asking that he serve just shy of three years in federal prison. Five years was the maximum sentence available under the plea agreement. Prosecutors pushed for the maximum sentence.

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 U.S. District Judge James 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," prosecutors said.

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.

City News Service contributed to this report.