OAKLAND — Mayor Sheng Thao is expected to soon cast the tie-breaking vote on a lucrative contract with a company whose CEO spent years doing business with a now-central figure in the FBI’s ongoing public corruption probe.
Next month, Thao alone is tasked with deciding the fate of an $8 million contract extension with ABC Security Service Inc., which provides security guard patrols at City Hall and other city buildings. The decision falls to her because the City Council’s vote this summer ended in a rare tie.
The looming decision puts Thao in the position of potentially greenlighting a multi-million contract with a company run by Ana Chretien, a lauded East Bay businesswoman who has had extensive business dealings with Mario Juarez.
Real estate transactions involving one of Chretien’s companies and Juarez – a fixture in the FBI’s investigation – have recently caught the attention of local authorities in an ongoing probe separate from the federal investigation, according to records filed in court.
Investigations by both the FBI and county authorities remain active, and no one has been charged.
The federal probe – and a related grand jury inquiry – became public when agents raided Thao’s Oakland Hills house on June 20, setting off a political firestorm that has imperiled her administration just months ahead of a planned recall election this November.
A critical vector in the investigation appears to be Juarez, a two-time City Council candidate and longtime political operative who has repeatedly come under scrutiny for failed business deals and mounting debts.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is investigating accusations that Juarez stiffed the influential Duong family out of a $1 million investment over a failed housing venture called Evolutionary Homes, court investigative records show. The Duong family, which has a city contract to pick up the city’s curbside recycling, claims Juarez failed to deliver dozens of housing units – each made of revamped shipping containers – that he allegedly promised the family.
The dispute led to dueling claims that each side assaulted the other during a contentious May 3 confrontation at the housing company’s Oakland waterfront offices. Barely a month later, Juarez claimed he was the target of an assassination attempt when gunmen fired at him outside his East Oakland house – a shooting that Juarez claimed was “retaliation” for his involvement in a criminal investigation, according to police records.
Public records show some of Chretien’s business with Juarez often came through Tidewater Group LLC, a lesser-known real estate company she started 18 years ago, and which Juarez claimed to represent as recently as 2021, court records show.
In February 2017, Tidewater bought a commercial property from one of Juarez’s companies for about $2.7 million, then sold it right back to another one of Juarez’s companies five years later at a significantly higher price — $4.3 million, according to county documents.
The property, which is near High Street and E. 12th Street in East Oakland, was at the center of multiple, potentially fraudulent loans to Juarez that are the subject of a current investigation by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office’s real estate fraud unit. Those loans did not involve Chretian.
Also in 2017, one of Juarez’s companies sold an East Oakland commercial building off 75th Avenue to Chretien for $845,000. The deal proved lucrative for Juarez’s outfit, which had just bought the metal-sided warehouse less than two months earlier for roughly half that price.
In yet another property deal, a company organized by Juarez bought a vacant parcel of land in March 2019 for $50,500 that bordered a residential property owned by Chretien, according to state and county records. Five months later, Chretien was listed as the CEO of the company, Ciudad Real LLC, and its business and mailing addresses changed from Juarez’s office to that of Chretien’s security business and Tidewater Group, the records show.
Chretien began the process of transferring the property – which sits along the Napa River – into her name roughly a year later, county records show.
Chretien declined multiple interview requests from this news organization. She formally removed herself as an agent of Tidewater Group in 2022, state records show. Juarez’s attorney declined to comment, and messages sent to Thao’s office were not immediately returned.
Chretien’s ABC Security Service has been a politically powerful firm, with Chretien donating thousands to politicians when earning contracts in the 1990s and early 2000s with the city, the Port of Oakland and its airport, according to media reports.
The company’s history has raised the eyebrows of many, including the city auditor in 2011, but ABC managed to get the city’s security contract in 2018. Since, they have helped patrol City Hall, city libraries and senior and recreation centers.
ABC has been running on similar extensions for the last couple years, after plans to approve a new security provider fell through amid changing security needs and a desire to wait for a new, permanent city administrator to arrive on the job. Its most recent extension expired June 30, though the company’s security guards are still patrolling city buildings.
A council vote in July to extend the contract through mid-2025 ended in odd fashion, when councilmembers Nikki Fortunado Bas, Noel Gallo, Kevin Jenkins and Dan Kalb voted in favor, while Rebecca Kaplan, Janani Ramachandran and Treva Reid were either excused or not present for the vote. Councilmember Carroll Fife abstained, leading to the need for Thao to weigh in. Thao is expected to vote during the first regular meeting in September, when council is back in session.
Mayor Sheng Thao takes part in a press conference at the Oakland Coliseum on Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in Oakland, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
If approved, the contract would push ABC’s funding haul to nearly $30 million since it took over as the city’s security guard provider in 2018. It allows for a 20 percent monthly raise over the city’s budgeted cost for security services, so that the company can “cover necessary, unforeseen or emergency security services outside of base level services,” a city report on the contract says.
City officials plan to open up the city’s security guard contract to bids from new companies in the coming months, ahead of the 2025-26 budget cycle.
Little has been said publicly by the FBI since a series of June 20 raids at addresses tied to Thao and the Duong family, who own the city-contracted trash recycling company California Waste Solutions. Thao has repeatedly insisted she is innocent and not a target of the federal government.
Mario Juarez is pictured in a video produced by the Vietnamese American Business Association, which highlights the work of Evolutionary Homes. Juarez is identified as a founder of the homebuilding company. (YouTube)
Meanwhile, the district attorney’s real estate fraud unit is investigating whether Juarez defaulted on a $250,000 loan with a prominent Chinatown leader around the time that Juarez bought back the High Street property from Chretien’s Tidewater Group company.
Local investigators suspect Juarez used the High Street property as collateral for the loan – despite having already allegedly put it up as collateral for a $3 million loan from another company called Balboa LLC. Juarez appears to have defaulted on that loan, too.
The High Street property was foreclosed upon in early December 2022, costing Balboa LLC close to $4 million, the records show.
Alameda County prosecutors have already charged Juarez in a separate felony case stemming from election mailers that Juarez allegedly orchestrated against Thao’s political rivals during the final days of the 2022 mayoral campaign.
Prosecutors say Juarez commissioned the flyers from a family-owned Oakland mailing company by writing nearly $53,600 in checks that later bounced. Investigators say Juarez had less than $215 in his bank account at the time, court records show.
Juarez has since pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Ernie Castillo, has previously framed the charges by District Attorney Pamela Price’s office as “politically motivated and unfortunate.”
