SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors on Friday unsealed an indictment charging Oakland’s former Mayor Sheng Thao, her longtime romantic partner and the owners of a waste company in a bribery scheme that allegedly influenced city government behind closed doors.

Sheng Thao, Andre Jones and father-and-son Andy and David Duong were indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges. At a Friday news conference, prosecutors used language reminiscent of mobster movies, referring to $95,000 payments for “no-show jobs” and a “pay-to-play” scheme that Jones and Thao allegedly benefited from, to extend city recycling contracts for the Duong family.

“The citizens of Oakland the larger Bay Area deserve better and demand their public officials to adhere to the highest standards of civil service and full transparency,” Linda Nguyen, an assistant special agent at the Internal Revenue Service, said at the news conference. “The accused in this case fell short of those standards.”

The charges include conspiracy, bribery, mail fraud and making false statements to authorities, court records show. Much of the allegations center on a 2022 election mailers benefiting Thao, which have already resulted in state criminal charges against the man allegedly behind them.

The federal investigation is ongoing, prosecutors said.

The announcement Friday came almost seven months after agents with the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service raided Thao’s Oakland Hills house, along with the homes of David and Andy Duong, along with their recycling company, California Waste Solutions.

The indictment alleges that the fix was in before Thao even took office in January 2023. Weeks before being elected mayor in 2022, she agreed to “benefit” housing and recycling companies owned by the Duongs “in exchange for various benefits” to herself and Jones.

Much of the scheme centers on an unnamed “Co-Conspirator 1,” who allegedly discussed the results of the 2022 election with Andy Duong. When it became clear that Thao — whom they supported — would emerge victorious, but that ex-Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price would also win, the unnamed co-conspirator quipped, “So we may go to jail…but we are $100 million dollars (sic) richer.”

“Money buys everything,” Andy Duong allegedly replied.

At Friday’s news conference in San Francisco, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Robbins described how the charges lay out “a corrupt scheme in which the defendants used bribes, wire fraud, mail fraud and other illegal practices to manipulate and corruptly influence the levers of local government.”

Robbins noted he was standing in for U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey of the state’s Northern District — whose late father, Henry, had been a longtime Alameda County judge — has recused himself from the federal investigation, but declined to specify why.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, Thao walked into the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse shortly after 8:30 a.m. Friday, accompanied by her attorney, Jeff Tsai. Wearing a dark blue pantsuit, Thao appeared in a light mood — chatting and laughing with a security guard after walking inside.

Approached by a reporter, she declined to comment and directed questions to her attorney.

“The indictment itself is chock-full of allegations,” Tsai said, reading from a statement outside the courthouse, “but it is not chock-full of evidence — and that’s what we’re going to prove in the course of our defense in this case.”

Tsai described the case as being “built on allegations from an unknown co-conspirator that, we believe, when the case is revealed, will show that my client has committed no crimes.”

She later plead not guilty in court to charges that include conspiracy, bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds and conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud and honest services wire fraud. A judge released her on a $50,000 unsecured bond but the court said she must stay in Northern California and surrender her passport.

Andre Jones arrived at the courthouse around 9:45 a.m., wearing a dark blue suit and dark blue tie. He declined to comment about the indictment filed against him.

“I’m not guilty,” said Jones, when asked to enter a plea in court. He too was released on a $50,000 unsecured bond and has moved to be represented by a federal public defender, unlike the rest of the defendants who will continue to hire their own attorneys.

David and Andy Duong arrived at the courthouse shortly after 9 a.m., accompanied by several attorneys. David Duong, who wore a dark blue suit and blue tie, shook hands with Andy after they passed through courthouse security.

Neither man acknowledged a reporter who asked the two men questions after the entered the courthouse.

David Duong was released on a $100,000 bond, secured through his home. He’s supposed to stay in the northern and eastern districts of California, with a couple notable exceptions: On Saturday, he’s slated to travel to Washington D.C. to attend the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, and return on Tuesday.

Prosecutors didn’t object, and the judge approved that request.

The younger Duong also pleaded not guilty and was released on a $100,000 bond secured through his home. And like his father, he was given a travel exception outside of northern and eastern California: Over the next several weeks, he’s allowed to go to Las Vegas for two previously-planned trips, one of them being the Super Bowl on Feb. 9. Andy Duong’s wife is expecting a baby in the next several weeks, and some of that travel would be for a final trip before the child’s arrival, one of Andy Duong’s attorneys said. That attorney stressed those trips may now not happen, given this week’s indictments.

Andy Duong’s attorneys also released a statement saying he is “innocent of the charges.”

“We have kept quiet despite the media frenzy of the past months in the hope that the government would correctly come to see through objective investigation that the allegations are baseless, and being fanned by nothing more than gossip and supposition stitched together by the fabrications and delusions of those who lack all fundamental credibility,” the statement said. “But disappointingly, Andy instead is today the most recent in a long line of Asian Americans who unfairly are singled out and forced to pay a price for daring to be active in the political sphere. We look forward to clearing his good name before the court and a jury of his peers.”

In a statement, the attorneys for David Duong said that he “denies wrongdoing and will vigorously defend these allegations in court.”

“He looks forward to prevailing in this case and continuing his decades of service, philanthropy, and devotion to our community and the Bay Area,” said the statement from attorneys Ed Swanson and August Gugelmann.

Since last summer’s raids, federal officials offered few clues about the investigation outside of subpoenas issued to the city, which sought documents related to the former Oakland Army Base, homelessness initiatives, the Oakland Police Department and Evolutionary Homes LLC, an obscure homebuilder partly founded by the Duongs. The FBI also signaled an interest in Jones, along with city policies on retaining and destroying documents.

A significant revelation came in December, when the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office claimed the Duongs and another city contractor paid hundreds of thousands of dollars around the time of the November 2022 election to Mario Juarez, a political operative. By elevating Thao to office, county prosecutors alleged, each company could potentially maintain their lucrative contracts with the city.

In all, the companies allegedly funneled $295,000 in payments to Juarez — some of which funded controversial mailers attacking Loren Taylor, Thao’s biggest opponent in the 2022 election, and another mayoral candidate, former Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente. The DA’s office also claimed Jones received a $7,500 payment from Juarez.

Juarez later founded a housing company with the Duongs called Evolutionary Homes, which approached city officials across the East Bay with a proposal to help homeless women and children by turning shipping containers into living spaces. The partnership appeared to fizzle in spring 2024, after the Duongs claimed Juarez bilked them out of a $1 million investment in the company and the two sides traded assault allegations.

Juarez ultimately is believed to have spent much of 2024 cooperating with federal authorities in their public corruption campaign. In June, Juarez’s Fruitvale District home was shot up in what authorities described as a failed assassination attempt. The FBI raids happened 11 days later.

Last year, Price’s office charged Juarez with grand theft for allegedly bouncing checks to pay for the mailers. He has countered that Price charged him only after failing to extort him for $25,000, and Juarez’s lawyer said he expects the case to soon be dismissed. Price, recalled in the same 2024 election as Thao, denied ever speaking to Juarez in substance on the day Juarez claims she tried to shake him down. Two other lawyers, from the public defender’s office, later came forward with allegations that Price punished their client in a murder case after one of the lawyers declined to offer political support.

It all marked the culmination of a disastrous seven-month fall from grace for Thao, an ambitious politician who quickly parlayed a single term on Oakland’s City Council into nearly two years as the youngest mayor in the city’s history. A Stockton-born daughter of Hmong refugees, she began her career as an aide to Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, and quickly amassed support from a wide coalition of labor unions that ultimately led her to the city’s highest office.

Despite her persistent claims of innocence and assurances to the public that she was not the target of the FBI’s criminal probe, Thao quickly lost trust with a public already reeling from the pandemic’s hardships. And the 39-year-old’s frequent feuds with the city’s institutions — from the local NAACP chapter to a popular police chief Thao fired to a business community fed up with crime — left her scrambling for allies ahead of a historic recall election in November, when more than 60% of voters removed her from office.

Her most steadfast ally through the years appeared to be Jones, her decade-long romantic partner. The two met while working for Kaplan — he as the councilmember’s chief of staff, she as an intern — and later lived together in a house in the Oakland Hills, each of them raising a child together from a previous relationship.

Until Friday, the Duong family had been known more for prolific schmoozing alongside California’s elected leaders and a proclivity for charitable giving each election season.

For years, Andy Duong made a habit of posting pictures on social media of his handshakes, dinners and even vacations with a who’s who of Bay Area politicians, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley. Meanwhile, David Duong garnered a reputation as a benevolent and opportunistic businessman, donating drones to the Oakland Police Department and helping to lead a trade delegation in 2023 to Vietnam, the country where he grew up and where his family still operates a recycling business.

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