Three unanswered questions about Oakland’s federal corruption case

OAKLAND — Not sure what became of the federal corruption case involving former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and others? It’s a fair question — the details grew only more complicated after a new court filing by one of Thao’s three co-defendants.

Nearly 10 months after Thao, her romantic partner Andre Jones, and father-and-son businessmen David and Andy Duong pleaded not guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges, there is still no trial date.

The case has moved slowly since indictments were filed in January, with court hearings since then mainly limited to discussions about gathering evidence.

A similar corruption probe in San Leandro led to federal charges last week against City Councilmember Bryan Azevedo, who — like Thao and Jones in Oakland — is accused of accepting bribes to funnel taxpayer dollars to the Duongs’ housing company, Evolutionary Homes.

On Tuesday, prosecutors acknowledged for the first time that the

After months of silence among the defendants in Oakland, a new development emerged over the past week, when David Duong filed a motion in court challenging the credibility of an apparent FBI informant whose testimony could play a crucial role in an eventual trial.

The informant, a co-conspirator who is not identified in the indictments, is widely believed to be longtime East Bay political insider Mario Juarez, a former business partner of the Duongs. Juarez, who has not been charged, appears central to the feds’ case.

What went into David Duong’s legal challenge against Juarez? Where does the Oakland case go from here? And how does it all tie into San Leandro?

Here’s where things stood this week:

Who is Mario Juarez and what is his alleged involvement in this case?

Long before he got into business with the Duong family, Juarez had been well known in Oakland’s political circles as a former real estate agent, two-time council candidate and a behind-the-scenes consultant who was unafraid to play rough to win elections.

He also moved fast in the business sphere: starting various companies that shuttered soon afterward, swapping properties at a rapid pace and allegedly running up unpaid debts with former business associates, according to court records and public documents.

Those two worlds collided in the 2022 mayoral election, when Juarez bought political ads to attack Thao’s opponents. Not long afterward, Jones received thousands of dollars in a payment from the alleged co-conspirator, widely believed to be Juarez, according to court filings.

Prosecutors now allege these were bribes — that Thao had promised to grant a lucrative city housing contract to Evolutionary Homes, a company started by Juarez and the Duongs.

But in a new court filing, David Duong’s attorneys contend that the feds had no evidence of David’s involvement, even after a year of investigating, until Juarez cooperated. The filing does not identify Juarez, but exhibits included in it align with Juarez’s past business dealings and legal troubles.

The alleged co-conspirator appears to have become an informant in 2024 after he and the Duongs had a falling-out over their shared business interests, leading to at least one physical altercation between them. Juarez’s affidavit gave the FBI enough probable cause to raid several Oakland addresses tied to the defendants in June of that year.

But David Duong’s attorney argued there was insufficient evidence against David in the affidavit used to raid his home in June 2024, beyond Juarez recounting that the elder Duong had attended meetings where the alleged bribery plot was discussed.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will consider Duong’s motion for a hearing, which would assess the credibility of information behind the feds’ search warrant.

Would a jury find Juarez’s testimony credible?

The filing marked the first time that any of the defendants have publicly challenged Juarez’s telling of events, which is primarily corroborated by text messages between him and Andy Duong, according to court records.

While the motion is limited to David Duong’s defense, it could foreshadow a theme of the case: whether a jury would view the federal government’s key witness as credible.

“The government failed to disclose that Co-Conspirator 1, the central figure in this supposed scheme, has a decades-long history of fraud,” Duongs’ attorneys, which include Edward Swanson, wrote in the filing.

Records previously reported by this news organization show that regulators had filed at least $96,000 worth of state and federal tax liens against Juarez in the years since 2015, when he was also forced to surrender his real-estate license amid allegations of wrongful business dealings, which include civil lawsuits filed against him and his companies.

Juarez was previously charged with signing fraudulent checks for the attack ads he purchased against Thao’s opponents in 2022 — a case later dismissed by Alameda County prosecutors. Duong’s attorneys say the affidavit failed to mention any of these past allegations.

The attorneys also describe Juarez as lying that a shooting at his home in June 2024 — less than two weeks before the raids — had been an assassination attempt. In March, county prosecutors filed charges against a man in relation to the shooting.

Juarez’s claims, Duong’s attorneys wrote, “are rendered fundamentally unreliable by his history of fraud, lies, and attacking his former business partners, and his willingness to lie to law enforcement about the circumstances of the shooting.”

Could Juarez be involved in the San Leandro corruption case?

The federal indictment against Azevedo, a sitting San Leandro council member, closely aligns with the alleged bribery plot in Oakland. In a court filing Tuesday, federal prosecutors said that the cases between Duong and Azevedo concern “overlapping events and entities.”

Prosecutors allege that Azevedo, who was friends with Andy Duong, accepted a $2,000 cash bribe and set up a limited liability company in his wife’s name for payments in exchange for pushing a city housing contract toward Evolutionary Homes.

Juarez and Andy Duong are not named in the indictment, but it appears likely they are two co-conspirators who prosecutors said devised the scheme with Azevedo in 2023, after the council member had attended a local business delegation to Vietnam led by Thao and sponsored by the Duong family.

Later that year, prosecutors say Azevedo had dinner with the man listed as “Co-Conspirator 2,” who allegedly handed the council member $2,000 in cash — the first of more payments to come.

The indictment does not describe any documentation of that meeting, which may suggest the feds know about it from Juarez.

Staff writer Jakob Rodgers contributed reporting.