Federal judge denies bid by former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, others to toss evidence in corruption case

Jakob Rodgers, The Mercury News on Apr 29, 2026

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A federal judge this week refused to toss a trove of evidence against former Oakland, California, Mayor Sheng Thao and the men accused of bribing her, dealing a setback to efforts by the city’s one-time leader to fight federal fraud and bribery charges months before trial.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled Monday that Thao and her three co-defendants failed to prove government authorities acted inappropriately or hid damning details about their star witness while building their sprawling corruption case in the first half of 2024. Rather, the judge found multiple search warrants secured by investigators “were not obtained by presenting dishonest or reckless information,” as had been alleged by Thao, her romantic partner and the father-son business duo of David and Andy Duong.

“Defendants present no credible evidence that the government intended to deceive or acted with reckless disregard,” the judge wrote. In doing so, the judge also denied a request by Thao and the others for an evidentiary hearing on the matter.

The decision ends a monthslong legal battle over the government’s reliance on a controversial star informant — named for the first time in court records as Mario Juarez, a former two-time Oakland city council candidate and longtime political operative — who spoke with investigators in the months before the FBI raided the defendants’ homes in June 2024.

In a flurry of motions last year, Thao, Jones and the Duongs argued that the government’s case rested on the “self-serving spin” of a man with a “shockingly long history of criminal charges and civil disputes.”

The defendants claimed that investigators hid Juarez’s “decades-long track record of defrauding business partners” when approaching magistrate judges for approval to search the quartet’s homes. In doing so, they cited a litany of civil fraud lawsuits against Juarez — 33 in all — as evidence that Juarez was an unreliable informant, and suggested that omitting many of those cases invalidated evidence seized during June 2024 raids on their homes.

“Three decades’ worth of public records, press stories, past federal and state criminal investigations, and inconsistent statements to law enforcement collectively show what should have been obvious to investigators in this case: The government’s key witness … lacks all credibility,” wrote Andy Duong’s attorneys in an early December filing.

Yet federal prosecutors shot back in their own filings, suggesting that investigators had already amassed a trove of text messages, notes and other digital records before even speaking with Juarez. They also claimed to have made magistrate judges well aware of Juarez’s troubled past, including many allegations against him in an exhaustive footnote.

“The government had been investigating defendants’ bribery scheme for over a year before interviewing Co-Conspirator 1,” federal prosecutors wrote in a prior filing, when Juarez’s name had yet to be publicly revealed.

Gonzalez Rogers also cast aside claims by Thao and the others that not enough ties existed between the alleged crimes and the defendants’ homes to warrant searching them, and that prior search warrants in 2024 were “overbroad.”

Her ruling also dismissed concerns by Thao that government investigators intentionally left out key portions of text messages by Juarez in a key warrant application. In that exchange, Juarez referenced Jones and spoke of “stupid black s—,” adding “Don’t think how things get done.”

Federal prosecutors had argued that they wanted to focus on “the actual hard evidence against [Juarez], rather than the potentially racially-charged language.” Gonzalez Rogers appeared to agree with them, ruling that the texts had been omitted in all prior search warrants, and suggesting that investigators never meant to “mislead the magistrate judge with regard to Juarez’s credibility.”

Thao is accused of accepting bribes from Andy Duong and his father, David, including political favors and a $95,000 no-show job for Jones. In return, prosecutors allege, Thao promised to secure lucrative city contracts for a fledgling housing company co-founded by David Duong and Juarez, as well as for the Duongs’ recycling firm, California Waste Solutions. CWS has city contracts to pick up curbside recycling in Oakland and San Jose.

All four defendants have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to stand trial Oct. 19.

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