SANTA ANA, Calif. – Federal investigators Thursday raided the homes of two members of an Orange County nonprofit accused of misusing millions in COVID-19 relief funds, including the group’s president and the daughter of County Supervisor Andrew Do, who worked for the organization.
Ciaran McEvoy, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, confirmed to City News Service 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.
The searches targeted the Garden Grove home of Viet America Society President Peter Pham and the Tustin home of Rhiannon Do, The Orange County Register reported. Mark Rosen, an attorney for the VAS, told the paper agents also searched Perfume River 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.
Orange County sued VAS earlier this month, with Rhiannon Do among the defendants.
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The lawsuit seeks to recover “millions of dollars … from a contractor that the county retained to provide nutritional meal services to elderly and disabled Orange County residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
According to the suit, Viet America Society “brazenly plundered these funds for their own personal gain. Defendants saw the opportunity and conspired to embezzle pandemic relief funds by executing contracts that they never intended to perform, instead using the funding streams as their own personal banking accounts.”
Rosen issued a statement last week calling the lawsuit “a disgrace” that is riddled with “many, many factual errors.”
Rosen said the lawsuit accused Pham of buying property in Buena Park with his wife.
“Peter Pham is not married,” Rosen said. “He does not know a Ngoc Tran. He does not own any property in Buena Park.”
He also disputed allegations about money given to the nonprofit for a war memorial in Mile Square Park.
“That war memorial was built,” Rosen said. “It’s there. The work was done.”
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,” Rosen said. “It’s easy to question all of this in hindsight, but people forget what it was like back then before we had the vaccines.”
Many of the agency’s drivers were practicing social distancing during the pandemic so did not get the required paperwork to prove delivery of some meals, Rosen said.
“Now the county is saying you should have them fill out a form and make contact,” Rosen said. “You’re applying standards that were impossible to apply during COVID.”
Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley countered, however, that the nonprofit had a duty to document the work.
“It’s a little late to be complaining when the requirement was to keep track of all this documentation in real time, so they don’t have to go back and reinvent what happened,” Foley said. “The expectation should have been to track it in real time. There’s very specific requirements. All the other vendors could do it, so why couldn’t they?”
Foley added, “My patience is as thin as their bookkeeping records at this point. … I don’t really have any use for whining and complaining after the fact.”
The county filed a second lawsuit against another organization, Hand to Hand Relief, claiming it has failed to provide documentation for roughly $3 million in county funds.
Supervisor Andrew Do has come under fire because his daughter worked for Viet America Society when he voted on contracts involving the organization. Do has said he would have disclosed the relationship if he felt it was required.