Whipped Cream Difficulties

This is one of the oddest hyena watches I’ve ever done. One reason is that I’ve never seen someone accused of “illegal registration of a helicopter”. (As we will see, there’s slightly more to the story than that.)

The city of Anaheim sold land to the Los Angeles Angels for a new stadium. There’s already been one issue with the land sale violating California affordable housing law.

Now, the state attorney general has asked a court to put the deal on hold. Why?

…a detailed FBI affidavit showed {Mayor Harry] Sidhu is under investigation for public corruption, and the attorney general said he does not yet know whether the facts uncovered in the investigation could make the sale illegal.

…

However, FBI special agent Brian Adkins wrote: “I believe Sidhu illustrated his intent to solicit campaign contributions, in the amount of $1,000,000 … in exchange for performing official acts intended to finalize the stadium sale for the Angels.”

…

Adkins also said Sidhu “has attempted to obstruct an Orange County grand jury inquiry into the Angel Stadium deal.” The agent also said he believed there was probable cause that Sidhu “may have engaged in criminal offenses,” including fraud, theft or bribery, making false statements, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

…

Sidhu, according to the affidavit, met with a witness who was cooperating with the FBI investigation, although the mayor was unaware the person was an FBI source, and coached the witness to lie to the county grand jury about what the two had discussed and when they had discussed it.

Okay, so we’ve got obstruction of justice and witness tampering, as well as bribery. I’m guessing the false statements probably involve lying to the Feds. As for the fraud:

…SIDHU is engaged in an ongoing scheme to commit honest services fraud by sharing confidential information with representatives from the Los Angeles Angels Major League Baseball team (“the Angels”) regarding negotiations related to the City’s sale of Angel Stadium with the expectation of receiving a sizeable contribution to his reelection campaign from a prominent Angels representative.

Where does the helicopter come in?

The evidence, according to the affidavit, also showed Sidhu pursued an Arizona address to register his helicopter, despite the fact that he lived in Anaheim and based the helicopter out of Chino.
Had he registered the helicopter in California, he would have owed $15,888 in sales tax. Had he registered the helicopter in Arizona, he would have owed a $1,025 vehicle tax.

I’d tend to call that “tax fraud” myself, though I also have trouble throwing stones at someone who tries to lower their tax bill (especially in California).

It should be noted that:

• Mayor Sidhu has not actually been charged with any crimes yet, though the release of the FBI affidavit makes me think this is coming soon.
• Nobody from the Angels has actually been accused of a crime yet.

The other odd aspect of this story is that I got tipped off to it by Field of Schemes. Neil deMause is a little more to the left than I’d like, but we find common ground in being opposed to giving tax dollars to sports franchises. This is the first actual political corruption story I’ve ever picked up from him, so take a bow, Mr. deMause.

Edited to add 5/18: Well, we have an actual indictment. But not against Mayor Sidhu: against Todd Ament, the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.

According to federal officials, Ament – with the assistance of an unnamed political consultant who federal officials describe as a partner at a national public relations firm – devised a scheme to launder proceeds intended for the Chamber through the PR firm into Ament’s bank account, authorities say.
Federal officials say Ament and the PR consultant defrauded a cannabis company that believed it was paying $225,000 for a task force that would craft favorable legislation regarding cannabis.

The way I’m reading this, the charges against Mr. Ament aren’t directly related to Mayor Sidhu or the land deal: but the Feds had Mr. Ament nailed on those charges, and used them as leverage to flip Mr. Ament, who is strongly believed (based on poor document redaction) to be “Cooperating Witness #2” in the Sidhu affidavit.

More from Field of Schemes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2022 at 1:12 pm and is filed under California Über Alles, Helicopters, Law, Planes, Politics, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.