The Brief

It’s been more than two years since the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the corruption scandal that erupted in Anaheim two years ago.

Todd Ament, who in 2022 admitted to wire fraud, lying to a mortgage lender, lying on his tax returns and other crimes, faces a possible sentence of 30 years or more in prison, according to the US Department of Justice.

But, for now, he remains free on bail.

What the federal complaint outlined

In a federal complaint filed in 2022, prosecutors identified Ament as one of the ringleaders of a “cabal” of elected officials, political consultants and business leaders who worked behind the scenes to influence Anaheim politics. Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Ament laundered money meant for the Chamber of Commerce to his coffers. Prosecutors said he would use that money later to defraud a mortgage lender to buy a home in Big Bear.

He is also accused of orchestrating meetings between power brokers to discuss public matters in private.

Former Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu also pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the corruption scandal, specifically related to the $320 million sale of Angels stadium. Like Ament, he has yet to be sentenced.

Some politicians and residents are wondering the reasons for the delay.

“I think for those of us who are observing and paying attention it just feels we're just back to where a lot of this really started,” said former councilmember Jose Moreno.

He said there has been “radio silence” at City Hall about the corruption scandal and that it's been “business as usual.”

Why the sentencing delay?

LAist reached out to attorneys on both sides of the case to understand why the sentencing is now going on years. Prosecutors refused to comment. Ament’s defense lawyer, Salvatore Ciulla, did not respond to requests for comment. As of Monday, the docket report for Ament’s case listed the sentencing date as Dec. 9, 2022, but it did not show whether the hearing has been rescheduled.

Former federal prosecutors, who are not tied to Ament’s case, told LAist there are likely several reasons for the delay: The investigation is still ongoing and prosecutors are hoping to leverage Ament to charge other possible defendants.

Experts said sentencing can be delayed if Ament is cooperating with prosecutors.

Larry Rosenthal, former federal prosecutor and professor of law at Chapman University, said Ament’s plea agreement has a cooperation provision built in. That means if he cooperates with prosecutors, answering questions, providing documents and even wearing a wire if they require it, he could have his sentence reduced.

“My practice when I was a prosecutor is that I wanted individuals who I expected to testify in future cases not to be sentenced, so that the sentencing would remain hanging over them,” Rosenthal said.

Sometimes, he said, judges will ask lawyers specific reasons to delay a sentencing. Prosecutors could provide this information in a sealed file if they don’t want to alert people that the investigation is ongoing, Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal said sentencing can also be delayed if a defendant has breached the cooperation provision, for example, by providing false information. If that happens, a plea agreement or parts of it can be revoked.

Why the delay doesn't surprise experts

Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor, said it's not surprising that Ament’s sentencing is taking long. If he is cooperating with prosecutors, the authorities will use him “to look at other possible defendants, and they want to make sure they get the full extent of his information before he's sentenced.”

She said sentencing could take “months and even years” because prosecutors will go back and forth to confirm information with Ament, and “if the cooperation involves him testifying against others, then you have to build in the time for those charges as well as trials.”

Because multiple parties including Ament and former Mayor Harry Sidhu are involved, Levenson said, prosecutors will leverage them to further the investigation.

“He's (Ament) probably the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “It involved people who are of high political power, and for that reason, not only do they (prosecutors) have to be careful how they do the investigation, but they must make sure that they get to the heart of it, who is really benefiting from it, and who's calling the shots.”

The backstory

Catch up on what we know about Ament and the corruption scandal:

• In a 2022 federal criminal complaint, Ament was named a ringleader of a “cabal” that “wielded significant influence over the inner workings of Anaheim’s government.” Ament and an unnamed political consultant were accused of diverting funds from the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce to Ament’s personal coffers, laundered through the consultant’s firm. Prosecutors said Ament used the funds to “fraudulently secure financing” for a second home in Big Bear. 
• Ament also agreed to a plea bargain in which he admitted to his role in attempting to defraud a cannabis company that wanted to do business in the city. 
• An independent report commissioned by the city of Anaheim found that city leaders awarded large contracts to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, which Ament headed, "with little or no oversight or meaningful deliverables."
• According to the report, Ament and the former mayor of Anaheim engaged in “influence peddling,” meaning that. anyone who wanted an audience with the mayor would have to meet Ament first. The Anaheim Chamber of Commerce collected residents' personal information and used it to make unsolicited calls about political campaigns. 
• A state audit earlier this year showed that the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce misused public funds for political lobbying and to support Disneyland-friendly candidates. 
• An LAist report earlier this year revealed the FBI is investigating Santa Ana Unified School District's agreements with companies that provided COVID-19 testing to students. Some of the companies were owned or affiliated with Ament.

Critics say it's transparency without reforms

Then-Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu at an Orange County parade just a few months before he resigned.

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Daniel Knighton

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Getty Images

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Sidhu, the former mayor of Anaheim, pleaded guilty in 2023 to charges of obstructing an FBI investigation, lying to federal authorities and cheating on his taxes, according to court documents. In his plea agreement, Sidhu admitted to passing confidential information related to the sale of the stadium to the owners of the Angels baseball team, who were trying to buy it.

Last month, the Angels baseball team owners, received a settlement from the city because the stadium deal did not go through.

Moreno, the former council member, called the settlement “really disappointing” as it was the Angels’ consultant who received illegal information from the city.

He also said council members and the current mayor continue to refuse to talk to the public about the corruption scandal.

LAist has reached out to Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken for comment. She has not yet responded.

Moreno said the current City Council has made moves to improve transparency by sharing information publicly about meetings with corporate entities, like Disney.

The criminal complaint references an unnamed company federal investigators allege was a major player in the so-called "cabal." The Los Angeles Times identified that company as Disneyland Resort, but it has not been charged in connection with the scandal.

Moreno told LAist that the changes by the City Council are not enough.

It's just transparency without reforms, he said.

More sentencing delays

Ament is not the only one whose sentencing hearing has been delayed.

Former Orange County Democratic Party leader Melahat Rafiei, who revealed she was a cooperating witness in the FBI investigation, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. She has not been sentenced yet either. Rafiei was expected to be sentenced in May, but that hearing has also been delayed with recent developments in the case sealed.

Alaleh Kamran, Rafiei’s attorney, said cases are often postponed continued to accommodate the attorneys' schedules.

What we know about Rafiei's role

• In 2022, Rafiei, then a high ranking Democratic Party official, revealed to the Voice of OC that she was a cooperating witness into the FBI’s probe of corruption in Anaheim. She would later resign from her positions. 
• Then in 2023, she agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for attempting to defraud one of her clients.
• In the plea agreement, Rafiei is accused of telling a commercial cannabis company she would work to have Anaheim pass a cannabis ordinance in exchange for a payment of $300,000. Prosecutors say she falsely said two thirds of that payment would go to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, instead Rafiei intended to split the money between herself and an unnamed associate. 
• In the plea agreement, she is also accused of attempting to bribe two Irvine council members in 2018 with at least $225,000 to pass a cannabis ordinance which would have allowed her clients, a cannabis company, to open offices in the city. The bribes were to be passed off as legal payments as part of Rafiei’s political consulting work. Rafiei was not charged in relation to the scheme and the two council members were not named in the agreement. 

The cases involving Ament and Rafiei have both been assigned to the same judge.

When that happens, Rosenthal said, it's because prosecutors have identified the cases as related. It also signals that the investigation may be ongoing and more charges may be expected against more defendants.

MyLA311, the system designed to help residents access city services for graffiti removal or streetlight outages, got a makeover last year, but since then some Angelenos and Los Angeles city staff have reported it has been plagued by problems.

The city has received “numerous complaints” about the updated website and app, including issues with GPS and logging work, according to officials.

MyLA311 is set up so residents can report non-emergency issues and track requests for tree inspections, homeless encampment services and illegal dumping, to name a few. There are 86 options in neighborhoods, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, which helped launch the new system.

Staffers within the city’s Department of Public Works have said they’ve been frustrated by the rollout, according to city officials. They say it now takes longer to add their responses to service requests, and the city can’t record completed work that doesn’t have a service request connected to it.

City Council members Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez led a motion aimed at addressing the issues, saying they’ve caused concerns about the system’s overall functionality and accountability.

“Reports and individuals are telling us that because of this broken 311 app, folks are once again going back to using Excel sheets, phone calls, paper and pen in order to engage in service delivery, and I think that that's a problem,” Padilla said during Wednesday’s council meeting.

The motion instructs Public Works to make a formal report of any problems with the system, including how they may be affecting service timelines and completion rates, and asks the city’s IT agency to come up with potential solutions.

It was approved in a 12-0 vote Wednesday. Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, Eunisses Hernandez and Adrin Nazarian were absent.

How we got here

Bass announced the launch of the new MyLA311 last year, saying the previous website and app were outdated and had lasted years past their lifecycle.

In a 2023 directive, she’d called for the system to be modernized with the goal of providing better customer service and communication about the status of residents’ requests.

“This new and improved way to request and receive city services is another example of how we are breaking away from the old way of doing things to make our neighborhoods cleaner and safer,” Bass said in a March 2025 statement.

But some people say the new system is falling short.

According to the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council, the new app has “actually made it harder for Angelenos to request services.”

The Sylmar Neighborhood Council agreed the system needs improvements, writing in a community impact statement that MyLA311 fails to serve L.A. taxpayers effectively if it’s difficult to use or inaccurate.

In public comments, some residents cited “major issues” with the system, including GPS and location accuracy, invalid addresses and missing or incomplete service categories. One commenter wrote that addresses were being routed to other areas, some of them outside the city.

“As a result, they frequently lead to confusion in the field, delays in response and, in some cases, requests going unaddressed due to the difficulty in locating the reported issue or misdirection caused by inaccurate data,” the commenter said.

What’s ahead

The City Council approved several instructions aimed at improving MyLA311, including the following:

• Public Works is expected to report back on its issues with the system.
• The city’s Information Technology Agency is expected to report on system performance, including operational issues, and provide solutions as needed.
• Public Works and IT are expected to provide quarterly reports on service request data, including backlogs, average response times and requests received and closed.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to potentially proceed with mass deportations of more than a million foreign nationals, including those from Haiti and Syria, who live and work legally in the United States.

Until now these individuals have been accorded temporary legal status because their safety is imperiled by war or natural disasters in their home countries.

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990, and every president since then — Republican and Democrat — has embraced TPS. President Donald Trump, however, is trying to end it.

On Wednesday his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, told the justices that the statute clearly bars any court review of the administration's decisions. And he dismissed the idea that a separate law established to provide procedural fairness does not allow the courts to review the Homeland Security agency's decision-making either. Pressed by the court's three liberal justices, Sauer insisted that the courts cannot review anything.

"None of those procedural steps required by the statue are reviewable. That's your position?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

"Correct," responded Sauer.

"What you're basically saying is that Congress wrote a statute for no purpose," Sotomayor said.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that under the statute the secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to consult with the U.S. State Department about what the conditions are in those countries that people have been forced to flee. What if she didn't do that at all, Kagan asked. Or what if she asked, but the response from the State Department came back: "Wasn't that baseball game last night great!"

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what would happen if the secretary used a Ouija board to make decisions?

To all these hypotheticals, Solicitor General Sauer stood firm. That prompted this from Sotomayor: "Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a 'filthy, dirty, and disgusting s--thole country.' I'm quoting him. He declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision."

Sauer pushed back, noting that Kristi Noem, the then-DHS secretary, had not mentioned race at all. That prompted this response from Justice Jackson, the only Black woman on the court, "So the position of the United States is that we have an actual racial epithet that we aren't allowed to look at all the context."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of two adopted Haitian children, interjected at that point to clarify the administration's position. Are you conceding that individuals with TPS status could bring a challenge based on race discrimination? she asked.

Sauer appeared to concede the point.

Representing the Haitians, lawyer Geoffrey Pipoly described the administration's review as "a sham."

"The true reason for the termination [of TPS status] is the president's racial animus toward non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular," Pipoly said. "The secretary herself described people from Haiti" and from other non-white countries as "killers, leeches, saying, 'We don't want them, not one,'" while "simultaneously enacting another humanitarian form of relief for white and only white South Africans."

That was too much for Justice Samuel Alito who asked Pipoly, "Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a line-up, do you think you could say those people are … non-white?"

An uncomfortable Pipoly resisted categorizing each group until Alito got to his own roots.

"How about southern Italians?" Alito inquired, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Responded Pipoly: "Certainly 120 years ago when we had our last wave of European immigration, southern Italians were not considered white. … Our concept of these things evolves over time."

At the end of Wednesday's court session, one thing was clear: President Trump may be furious at some of the conservative justices he appointed for invalidating his tariffs, but for the most part, he is getting his way. Especially in light of the court's 6-to-3 decision, announced Wednesday, which effectively guts what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act, once celebrated as a signature achievement of American Democracy.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The last dog from the Eaton Fire taken in by Pasadena Humane has now been adopted.

Artemis the German shepherd was originally taken to the Pasadena animal shelter for emergency boarding. His family, which lost its home in the January fire, ultimately decided to put him up for adoption.

"The silver lining to all of that is — with all this tragedy — this incredible story of hope where we were able to help foster these animals we’re returning home," said Sarie Hooker,  communications manager at Pasadena Humane.

During his stay at Pasadena Humane, the cream-color pup won over many hearts.

"He's just such a striking boy. He's got this really fun, loving personality. He's very regal," Hooker said.

Hooker said Artemis was adopted by a family through the shelter's foster-to-adopt program.

"He just did amazingly. And the next thing we knew, he was adopted," Hooker said. "So it's a happy story."

Artemis says hello to a new family.

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Courtesy Pasadena Humane

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The Eaton Fire destroyed nearly 9,500 structures, including about 6,000 homes. Two days after the fire broke out, Pasadena Humane reported receiving more than 350 pets from displaced residents.

By the second week of the fire, the shelter had taken in some 600 pets, Hooker said.

" In totality, we were able to help with thousands of animals specifically for emergency boarding," Hooker said, including every kind of pet you can think of, as well as wild animals.

" We were seeing skunks, squirrels, hawks, owls, peacocks, raccoons, possums," she said.

Artemis isn't just the last dog to find a home — or return home — from the Eaton Fire.

He is the last animal.

" Artemis was our final, final animal — like dog, cat, critter. Anything else under the sun.  He was the last boy. So we're very happy," she said.

National and local organizers are calling on communities to abstain from work, school and shopping Friday in recognition of May Day.

The “economic blackout” is modeled after January protests in Minnesota following the surge of immigration enforcement and shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens.

“Our vision includes an economy that works for everyone with a living wage, strong labor protections and programs that keep families housed, fed, educated and healthy,” said Francisco Moreno, executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations in North America, in a Tuesday press conference.

The organization is one of more than 100 involved in planning a Los Angeles May Day rally with the theme, “solo el pueblo shuts it down:  no school, no work, no shopping.”

This year’s largest planned gathering starts at MacArthur Park, a longtime hub for day laborers and street vendors. Last July, immigration agents in armored vehicles descended on the park. The ongoing immigration raids and city policies have contributed to the challenges street vendors face.

“Starting there really sends a message that we're here,” said Kristal Romero, press secretary for the  Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “We're standing with this community, and if you take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

May Day’s history in LA

May Day, sometimes called International Workers' Day, started after an 1886 strike tied to the fight for an eight-hour work day. The protest turned violent after police attacked workers. In the 1990s, L.A. organizers started to connect the labor movement with advocacy for immigrant rights.

This year’s event also marks the 20th anniversary of 2006’s massive rallies in support of immigration reform.

Romero said the Federation has offered training on de-escalation, conflict resolution and non-violent protests and that hundreds of people will act as “peacekeepers” during Friday’s rally and march.

“ A lot of times, folks can get caught in echo chambers and it may really feel hopeless,” Romero said. “The big point of these events is to inspire hope to show people we're all here, we're all fighting for the same thing.”

Los Angeles County

MacArthur Park

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March begins at the corner of South Park View Street and Wilshire Boulevard and heads toward downtown L.A.
Organizers: Los Angeles May Day Coalition

L.A. City Hall

Time: Noon
Location: City Hall, 200 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Organizers: Union del Barrio and the Community Self-Defense Coalition

Boyle Heights

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Mariachi Plaza, 1831 First St.
Organizers: Centro CSO

Long Beach

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March starts at The Marketplace, 6501 Pacific Coast Highway, and ends at Mother’s Beach.
Organizers: Long Beach Indivisible, more details here.

San Fernando Valley

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: Northeast corner of Topanga Canyon and Victory Boulevard, Woodland Hills
Organizers: Indivisible Woodland Hills, SF Valley Brigade, others

Santa Clarita

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: 24292 Valencia Blvd.
Organizers: Indivisible CA27

Orange County 

Orange

Time: 3 p.m. rally
Location: City Hall, 300 E. Chapman Ave.

Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Orange Plaza Circle, Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street
Organizers: OC Indivisible Coalition

Santa Ana

Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Sasscer Park, 600 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana
Organizers: OC May Day Coalition