Federal authorities raided Orange County homes Thursday that the agency said were illegally purchased with public funds intended for pandemic relief programs, including meals for seniors.
The law enforcement operation continued into Thursday afternoon at several locations, including on Candeda Place in Tustin. Agents were seen leaving the house with boxes and what appeared to be laptop computers.
The homes were bought by a nonprofit group called Viet America Society, which is at the center of the federal investigation.
According to a civil lawsuit filed last week by the county, Rhiannon Do, daughter of county Supervisor Andrew Do, bought the Tustin townhouse last year. Rhiannon Do was the vice president of Viet America Society, which used federal funding for pandemic relief to buy homes, according to the lawsuit. The money was intended to be used to deliver meals to seniors and the disabled during the pandemic.
The searches also targeted the Garden Grove home of Viet America Society President Peter Pham, the Orange County Register reported. NewsChopper4 was over the home Thursday during the law enforcement activity.
In addition to the homes in Tustin and Garden Grove, the FBI confirmed a home in Fountain Valley also was searched.
In a statement to City News Service, Ciaran McEvoy, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, confirmed that agents carried out the searches, but he declined to discuss details.
“We’re executing a search warrant but we are declining to comment on (the) nature of investigation due to sealing order by the court,” McEvoy said.
Mark Rosen, an attorney for the VAS, told the Register that agents also searched a restaurant in Westminster. The VAS contracted with the restaurant during the pandemic to prepare meals that the organization was paid by the county to deliver to needy residents.
The county’s lawsuit seeks to recover millions of dollars. It accuses Viet America Society of “brazenly” using the funds for personal gain.
Rosen issued a statement last week calling the lawsuit “a disgrace” that is riddled with “many, many factual errors.” Rosen added that the Viet America Society “continues to provide food and delivery for the poor and the disabled today. You are all invited to come and see it in action. And they are keeping excellent records today.”
Rosen said the nonprofit provided the services promised in the COVID grant, but failed initially to keep good records.
“All the contracts were honored in the provision of services,” Rosen said. “This lawsuit is a smear job.”
Before the suit was filed, Rosen said the nonprofit has been struggling to document every meal delivered during the pandemic.
“They’re now trying to get records from people who don’t want to deal with the government, who are suspicious of the government because of their experience as refugees,” Rosen said of the Vietnamese community the nonprofit serves. “The county, three years after the fact, has impossible standards now as if there was no pandemic or no one was sick. It’s easy to question all of this in hindsight, but people forget what it was like back then before we had the vaccines.”
NBCLA reached out to Supervisor Do for comment.
City News Service contributed to this report.