The star prosecution witness in the federal corruption trial of former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao testified Friday about his role in an alleged scheme to funnel money to her in exchange for political favors. Mario Juarez, a long-time Oakland political operative and former City Council candidate, te stified about how he allegedly managed a pay-to-play relationship between Thao, her romantic partner Andre Jones, and David and Andy Duong, a father-son duo who operate the city’s recycling contractor, California Waste Solutions. Thao, Jones and the Duongs all pleaded not guilty to a rash of federal corruption and bribery charges in January. Juarez is testifying for the U.S. Department of Justice after pleading guilty to a bribery conspiracy charge of his own. In court on Friday, Juarez detailed the accusations at the heart of the prosecution’s case — that the Duongs allegedly agreed to pay Jones $300,000 a year for a fake job in exchange for Thao’s help securing a city contract to purchase modular homes. The homes were to be built by a company called Evolutionary Homes, founded by Juarez and the Duongs to build modular housing units out of old shipping containers with the intention of selling them to local governments to help with homelessness issues. Sheng Thao Oct 29 Former Oakland city employees testify in Sheng Thao corruption trial Sheng Thao Oct 28 Jurors hear secret recordings in Sheng Thao corruption trial The alleged quid pro quo agreement also involved Thao helping the family win a 10-year extension for their existing recycling contract, an extension of their existing land-lease at the old Oakland army base and an alleged promise from Thao to place their hand-picked candidate in a high-level position inside city government. Juarez also told the jury that as part of the illicit agreement, he helped the Duongs spend $75,000 on last-minute negative campaign mailers to help Thao win a tight mayoral election in 2022. He also said that he illegally coordinated with Jones to design the mailers. The original agreement only included using an independent expenditure committee to produce the negative mailers and to help Thao get elected, Juarez said, but Thao allegedly had an additional demand. “Then she threw a curveball,” he said. “We were willing to do the campaign and all the things in exchange, but she said, ‘I want $300,000 in exchange.'” The defendants were then thrust into a position in which they had to figure out a way to make payments to Jones look legitimate, Juarez said. To do that, they allegedly created a fake, no-show job for Jones so the payments wouldn’t arouse suspicion, Juarez said. During the day’s testimony, lead prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Fine showed the jury images of checks written to Jones that were allegedly in exchange for Thao’s part in the conspiracy. The jury also saw dozens of text messages between the defendants that prosecutors say are evidence of their long-running effort to pull off the scheme. In one such exchange after Thao eked out a narrow win in the mayoral election, Juarez texted Andy Duong “so we may go to jail.” “I was making light that we just committed a crime by funding an election and we may go to jail for doing this crime, but we’ll have $100 million in our bank account,” Jaurez told the jury Friday. Juarez also testified that the payments to Jones were going to increase to a total of up to $3 million, based on how many modular homes Oakland agreed to buy, “in exchange” for Thao’s agreement to help with the Duongs’ list of requests. “In exchange, the compensation went from $300,000 to a structure that would now make them millionaires,” Juarez said. He also testified about how he and Andy Duong planned their communications between themselves and other people involved in the alleged conspiracy in order to protect Andy’s father, David, and so that the elder Duong would have “plausible deniability” in the event that law enforcement started poking around. Juarez also said that he and Andy Duong became frustrated as the deal started to fall apart and when it appeared as of Thao wasn’t holding up her part of the bargain. “We didn’t invest money, talent, (negative political) ‘hits,’ took the time out of our day because we liked Sheng Thao,” he said, adding that they did all those things so that she would help them execute the scheme to further their business interests. Juarez testified for several hours Friday and is expected to be back on the stand when the trial resumes Thursday. ...read more read less